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Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, and to the north by the Gulf of Honduras, a large inlet of the Caribbean Sea. Its capital and largest city is Tegucigalpa.
Honduras was inhabited by many indigenous peoples when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century. The western-central part of Honduras was inhabited by the Lencas, the central north coast by the Tol, the area east and west of Trujillo by the Pech, the Maya and Sumo. These autonomous groups maintained commercial relationships with each other and with other populations as distant as Panama and Mexico. Honduras has ruins of several cities dating from the Mesoamerican pre-classic period that show the pre-Columbian past of the country.
The economy of Honduras is based mostly on agriculture, which accounts for 14% of its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013. The country's leading export is coffee (US$340 million), which accounted for 22% of the total Honduran export revenues. Bananas, formerly the country's second-largest export until being virtually wiped out by 1998's Hurricane Mitch, recovered in 2000 to 57% of pre-Mitch levels. Cultivated shrimp is another important export sector. Since the late 1970s, towns in the north began industrial production through maquiladoras, especially in San Pedro Sula and Puerto Cortés.
The Football War also known as the Hundred Hours' War or 100 Hour War, was a brief military conflict fought between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969. Existing tensions between the two countries coincided with rioting during a 1970 FIFA World Cup qualifier. The war began on 14 July 1969 when the Salvadoran military launched an attack against Honduras. The Organization of American States (OAS) negotiated a cease-fire on the night of 18 July, which took full effect on 20 July. Salvadoran troops were withdrawn in early August.
The United Fruit Company was an American multinational corporation that traded in tropical fruit grown on Latin American plantations and sold in the United States and Europe. The company was formed in 1899 from the merger of the Boston Fruit Company with Minor C. Keith's banana-trading enterprises. It flourished in the early and mid-20th century, and it came to control vast territories and transportation networks in Central America, the Caribbean coast of Colombia and the West Indies. Although it competed with the Standard Fruit Company for dominance in the international banana trade, it maintained a virtual monopoly in certain regions, some of which came to be called banana republics – such as Costa Rica, Honduras, and Guatemala.
British Honduras was a British Crown colony on the east coast of Central America, south of Mexico, from 1783 to 1964, then a self-governing colony, renamed Belize in June 1973, until September 1981, when it gained full independence as Belize. British Honduras was the last continental possession of the United Kingdom in the Americas.
The Bay Islands is a group of islands off the coast of Honduras. Collectively, the islands form one of the 18 departments of Honduras. The departmental capital is Coxen Hole, on the island of Roatán.
Honduras National Congress has 128 members (diputados); they serve four-year terms.
José Manuel Zelaya Rosales is a Honduran politician who was President of Honduras from 27 January 2006 until 28 June 2009, and who since January 2022 serves as the first First Gentleman of Honduras. He is the eldest son of a wealthy businessman, and inherited his father's nickname "Mel". Before entering politics he was involved in his family's logging and timber businesses.
The Banana Wars were a series of conflicts that consisted of military occupation, police action, and intervention by the United States in Central America and the Caribbean between the end of the Spanish–American War in 1898 and the inception of the Good Neighbor Policy in 1934. The military interventions were primarily carried out by the United States Marine Corps, who also developed a manual, the Small Wars Manual (1921) based on their experiences. On occasion, the United States Navy provided gunfire support and troops from the United States Army were also deployed.
Iris Xiomara Castro Sarmiento is a Honduran politician who is the 56th president of Honduras, in office since January 2022. She is the country's first female president, having earlier served as first lady during the presidency of her husband Manuel Zelaya.
In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resources. In 1904, the American author O. Henry coined the term to describe Honduras and neighbouring countries under economic exploitation by U.S. corporations, such as the United Fruit Company. Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites. The ruling class controls the primary sector of the economy by way of the exploitation of labor; thus, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile oligarchy that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation.
Honduras and the United States have had formal relations since 1830. There is close cooperation between the two countries, particularly in the areas of the War on Drugs while the National Port Authority in Puerto Cortés is part of the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection's Container Security Initiative.
Education in Honduras is essential to the country of Honduras, for the maintenance, cultivation, and spread of culture and its benefits in Honduran society without discriminating against any particular group. The national education is secular and founded on the essential principles of democracy, inculcating and fomenting strong nationalist sentiments in the students and tying them directly to the economic and social development of the nation. Honduras's 1982 Constitution guarantees the right to education, a right also conveyed through the National Constituent Assembly's Decree 131 and in the official daily publication La Gaceta.
The 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis was a political dispute over plans to either rewrite the Constitution of Honduras or write a new one.
The president of Honduras officially known as the President of the Republic of Honduras, is the head of state and head of government of Honduras, and the Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. According to the 1982 Constitution of Honduras, the Government of Honduras consists of three branches: Executive, Legislative and Judicial. The president is the head of the Executive branch, their primary duty being to "Execute and enforce the Constitution, treaties and conventions, laws and other legal dispositions." The President is directly elected for a four year term.
The 2009 Honduran coup d'état, part of the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis, occurred when the Honduran Army on 28 June 2009 followed orders from the Honduran Supreme Court to oust President Manuel Zelaya and send him into exile. Zelaya had attempted to schedule a non-binding poll on holding a referendum on convening a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution. Zelaya refused to comply with court orders to cease, and the Honduran Supreme Court issued a secret warrant for his arrest dated 26 June. Two days later, Honduran soldiers stormed the president's house in the middle of the night and detained him, forestalling the poll. Instead of bringing him to trial, the army put him on a military aeroplane and flew him to Costa Rica. Later that day, after the reading of a resignation letter of disputed authenticity, the Honduran Congress voted to remove Zelaya from office, and appointed Speaker of Congress Roberto Micheletti, his constitutional successor, to replace him. It was the first coup to occur in the country since 1978.
Christianity is the predominant religion in Honduras, representing 87% of the total population according to a 2017 estimate. The pre-Hispanic peoples that lived in actual Honduras were primarily polytheistic Maya and other native groups. In the 16th century, Roman Catholicism was introduced by the Spanish Empire and still holds a 46% share of the population. Protestantism accounts for 41% of the country's population.
Tegucigalpa, formally Tegucigalpa, Municipality of the Central District, and colloquially referred to as Tegus or Teguz, is the capital and largest city of Honduras along with its twin sister, Comayagüela.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Honduras is part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The virus was first confirmed to have spread to Honduras on 10 March 2020, when two women tested positive for the virus after one of them landed on Toncontín International Airport in a flight from Madrid, Spain, and the other on Ramón Villeda Morales International Airport in a flight from Geneva, Switzerland. Confirmed cases have been reported in all 18 departments of the country, with the majority of cases located in Cortés and Francisco Morazán.
References
- ↑ "Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments: Honduras". Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original on October 4, 2013. Retrieved March 31, 2019.
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