Once part of Spain’s vast empire in the New World, Honduras became an independent nation in 1821. After two and a half decades of mostly military rule, a freely elected civilian government came to power in 1982. During the 1980s, Honduras proved a haven for anti-Sandinista contras fighting the Marxist Nicaraguan Government and an ally to Salvadoran Government forces fighting leftist guerrillas. The country was devastated by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, which killed about 5,600 people and caused approximately $2 billion in damage. Since then, the economy has slowly rebounded, despite COVID and severe storm-related setbacks in 2020 and 2021.

Economy

Second-fastest-growing Central American economy; COVID-19 and two hurricanes crippled activity; high poverty and inequality; declining-but-still-high violent crime disruption; systemic corruption; coffee and banana exporter; enormous remittances.

Population

The population is 9,571,352 (2023 est.) which consists of Mestizo (mixed Amerindian and European) 90%, Amerindian 7%, African descent 2%, White 1%.

The African Cultural legacy is evident in some places of Honduras. Trujillo held certain dance parties, whose dancers carry specific masks. Both the dance and the masks are of Mandinka kangkurao origin.  In addition to the Afro-Hondurans that descended from slaves imported by the Spanish, there are other Afro communities in Honduras, also present in Nicaragua y Guatemala: Miskito, Creoles, and Garifuna.

Afro-Hondurans or Black Hondurans are Hondurans of Sub-Saharan African descent. Research by Henry Louis Gates and other sources regards their population to be around 1-2%.  They descended from: enslaved Africans by the Spanish, as well as those who were enslaved from the West Indies and identify as Creole peoples, and the Garifuna who descend from exiled zambo Maroons from Saint Vincent. The Creole people were originally from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, while the Garifuna people were originally from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Garifunas arrived in the late seventeen hundreds and the Creole peoples arrived during the eighteen hundreds. About 600,000 Hondurans are of Garífuna descent that are a mix of African and indigenous as of Afro Latin Americans. Honduras has one of the largest African communities in Latin America.

One of the first African slaves who arrived in Honduras, Juan Bardales, participated in the Spanish conquest of the province, especially in Trujillo. Shortly thereafter, Berdales was awarded his freedom. In Honduras, slaves played an important role in the mining industry. Many of them came from Africa, from places like Angola or Senegambia, while others came from the Caribbean. In 1542, 165 slaves came via Portugal and 150 from Santo Domingo.  In Honduras, were imported slaves Mandinka kangkurao of the Gambia River in Senegambia.

By the mid-sixteenth century, between 1,000 and 1,500 enslaved blacks worked in the gold washings of Olancho; these slaves likely hailed from Africa. In Honduras, 300 Africans arrived in Olancho and at Rio Guayape in 1590; they were sent to both areas for mining wood. A crew of Angolas worked in the mines and businesses in San Miguel. Although many mulattoes and browns also worked in Tegucigalpa on the same dates. Between 1750 and 1779, a larger group of African slaves, Carabali and mondongos (a Kongo tribe) people, were taken to Honduras to build the military fort San Fernando de Omoa, the most important in the region.

In 1796, approximately 300 “French black” from the French colony of Saint Domingue came to Trujillo, in the context of the conflict that gave rise to the independence of Haiti. In 1797, the British exported between 2,000 and 4,000 Black Caribs – mixture of Carib Indians and African Blacks – to the island of Roatán in Honduras, because they rebelled against them on the island St. Vincent. After this, these Garifuna, as they called themselves, migrated to Trujillo and from there, scattered along the coasts of all the Central American mainland until Costa Rica (without reaching this place), especially by the persecutions to which they were subjected by the Spanish authorities. Some of them were involved in the civil wars of the time.

In the late eighteenth century records tell of significant percentages of blacks and mulattoes in Tegucigalpa. But at the end of the colonial period, slaves were already mainly mulattoes. Between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth century, the British introduced black slaves from Jamaica, Cayman Island and Belize in Honduras.

According to Luis Pedro Taracena, in these years, Tegucigalpa was populated by 80% mulattoes and this percentage was increasing over time, at least until 1815 (when they were 86% of the population). During the twentieth century, mulattoes and browns were progressively neutralized under the category of “Ladino“. According to historian Marbin Barahona, the racial mixture between blacks with whites and Amerindians occurred since the 1520s, due to the decline of the indigenous population, the Spanish immigration scanty, and the meager arrival of African slaves. The recovery of the hegemony of silver and indigo, the prohibition of non-indigenous groups living in Indian villages, and the population growth recorded in the same century, miscegenation, primarily among Amerindian and Spanish, not only increased significantly at this time but concentrated in certain regions, especially in the current Francisco Morazán Department, and Choluteca and Comayagua departments.

These departments attracted many mixed-race people (mestizo, mulatto, pardo, Ladino, etc.), unlike the indigenous concentration departments West. In 1775, lived in San Fernando de Omoa between 300 and 400 Africans and about 75 white families. They remained there until the early nineteenth century. So, in the late eighteenth century, the Spanish-origin population would have been a minority compared to the racially mixed populations (“Ladino”).

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, Ladinos were the majority of the population in 1800 (60% 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 could have been remixed with whites, Amerindians, and mestizos.

It was in the early nineteenth century when slavery was abolished in Honduras. After 1820, Afro-Hondurans were simply considered citizens and obtained the rights of any citizen to be excluded from the category of “free blacks”. This was perhaps because General Francisco Ferrera, Honduran politician who was part of the government of Honduras at the time, had ancestors who were mulattoes. Nonetheless, he decreed the expulsion of the country’s Garifuna (but ultimately this is not carried out).^[9]

The Honduran historian Antonio Canelas Diaz says that by the year 1870, was organized in the city of La Ceiba – the point where, emerged on a large scale banana production in Honduras – a company called “New Orleans and Bay Island Company” whose executives, imported the first black Creoles hired by fruit, since they were labor” […] more qualified than the Honduran “in banana cultivation, and who had previously worked in their respective nations that sector. Other black anglophone contingents arrived in Honduras with the arrival of black workers from Jamaica and other English-speaking islands to work for the banana transnationals.

In 1931, the intellectual, Alfonso Guillen Zelaya Honduran, raised the huge black presence on the north coast and the fear that it increased what he called the “black import” Honduras ended up being a country of mulatto people, however, as the country was mostly mestizo and the indigenous population had been growing over the years.

Miskito Zambo during Independence era

In addition to the area’s geographic isolation, the Miskito military capacity and British support allowed the people to retain their independence when Spain controlled the Pacific side of Central America. The Miskito Coast remained independent throughout much of the period of the Federal Republic of Central America, but Nicaragua finally absorbed the territory in 1894.

Once the Central American republics became independent in the early to mid-nineteenth century, they had less power in relation to other nations than did Spain and struggled to protect their own territorial interests against filibusters and the United States government, which took an increasing strategic interest in the area.

Great Britain took an interest in the affairs on the Mosquito Coast, as it had trade positions in Belize/British Honduras and Jamaica. In addition, US trading interests began to develop in the region. British governors in Belize began issuing commissions and appointments to Miskito kings and other officials, such as King Robert Charles Frederick, crowned in Belize in 1825. British officials regularly officially recognized the various Miskito offices; it worked to protect Miskito’s interests against the Central American republics and against the United States.

The latter contested British influence as per the Monroe Doctrine. The United States’ involvement in the war with Mexico prevented it from enforcing the doctrine. As Britain gradually became less interested in its commissioning of Miskito nobility, the Miskito effectively began to operate as an independent state. Due to British economic interest in Central America (particularly British Honduras, now Belize), they regularly traded with the Miskito.

After Nicaragua declared independence in 1821, combined Miskito-Zambo raiders began to attack Honduran settlements. They sometimes rescued enslaved Miskito before they could be transported beyond their reach. They also enslaved women from other tribes for use as sexual partners.

Their society allowed polygamy. The Miskito population boomed as the men had more children with their slave women. These raids continued for many years after animosity between Britain and Spain ended at the international level. For a long time, the Miskito considered themselves superior to other indigenous tribes of the area, whom they referred to as “wild”. The Miskito commonly adopted European dress and English names.

From the middle of the nineteenth century, British interest in the region began to wane. At the Treaty of Managua in 1860, Great Britain allowed Nicaragua to have an uncontested claim over the Mosquito Coast. The treaty provided for a Miskitu reserve, a self-governing entity that enjoyed semi-sovereign rights. Nicaraguan forces occupied the area in 1894 and took over the state. The British restored the Miskito Reserve in July, but Nicaraguan forces reoccupied in August 1894 and ended its independence.

Various major American fruit companies such as the United Fruit Company, which had begun large-scale production of bananas in the Miskito reserve, supported Nicaragua’s takeover of power in the area. The American companies preferred Nicaraguan authority to the Miskito, especially as the Miskito elite was more prepared to protect the rights of small landholders than the Nicaraguan government.