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 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.
Dole plc is an Irish-American agricultural multinational corporation headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. The company is among the world's largest producers of fruit and vegetables, operating with 38,500 full-time and seasonal employees who supply some 300 products in 75 countries. Dole reported 2021 revenues of $6.5 billion.
La Ceiba is a municipality, the capital of the Honduran department of Atlántida and a port city on the northern coast of Honduras in Central America. It is located on the southern edge of the Caribbean, forming part of the south eastern boundary of the Gulf of Honduras. With an estimated population of 209,000 living in approximately 170 residential areas, it is the fourth most populous and third most important city in the country.
Samuel Zemurray, nicknamed "Sam the Banana Man", was an American businessman who made his fortune in the banana trade. He founded the Cuyamel Fruit Company and later became president of the United Fruit Company, the world's most influential fruit company at the time. Both companies played highly controversial roles in the history of several Latin American countries and had a significant influence on their economic and political development.
Juan Manuel Gálvez Durón was President of Honduras from 1 January 1949 until 5 December 1954. His election, for the National Party of Honduras (PNH), ended the 16-year dictatorship of Tiburcio Carías Andino.
Joseph, Luca, and FelixVaccaro, known as the Vaccaro brothers, were Italian-American businessmen originally from Sicily.
Railroads in Honduras were built in late 19th and early 20th centuries by two competing U.S. corporations, United Fruit and Standard Fruit. All were in the Caribbean coastal area and never reached the capital. In 1993, the combined network had 785 km (488 mi). As of 2006, only three separate segments remain in operation under the management of FNH - Ferrocarril Nacional de Honduras:
In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically and economically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the export of natural resources. In 1904, American author O. Henry coined the term to describe Guatemala and Honduras 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 exploitation of labour. Therefore, 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.
Leon Winfield Christmas, usually called Lee Christmas, was an American mercenary in Central America.
Banana production in Honduras plays an important role in the economy of Honduras. In 1992, the revenue generated from banana sales amounted to US$287 million and along with the coffee industry accounted for some 50% of exports. Honduras produced 861,000 tons of bananas in 1999. The two corporations, Chiquita Brands International and the Dole Food Company are responsible for most Honduran banana production and exports.
Honduras is a republic in Central America, at times referred to as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize.
Authoritarian General Tiburcio Carías Andino controlled Honduras during the Great Depression, until 1948. In 1955—after two authoritarian administrations and a general strike initiated by banana workers—young military reformists staged a coup that installed a provisional junta and paved the way for constituent assembly elections in 1957. This assembly appointed Ramón Villeda Morales as president and transformed itself into a national legislature with a 6-year term.
The western Caribbean zone is a region consisting of the Caribbean coasts of Central America and Colombia, from the Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mexico to the Caribbean region in northern Colombia, and the islands west of Jamaica are also included. The zone emerged in the late sixteenth century as the Spanish failed to completely conquer many sections of the coast, and northern European powers supported opposition to Spain, sometimes through alliances with local powers.
The general strike of 1954 was a watershed political and economic event in the history of Honduras that ushered in widespread change.
Although bananas have been planted for thousands of years, the development of an intercontinental trade in bananas had to wait for the convergence of three things: modern rapid shipping (steamships), refrigeration, and railroads. These three factors converged in the Caribbean in the 1870s, and would lead to the development of large-scale banana plantations, usually owned and operated by highly integrated large corporations such as Dole and Chiquita Brands International.
Cuyamel Fruit Company, formerly the Hubbard-Zemurray Steam Ship Company, was an American agricultural corporation operating in Honduras from 1911 until 1929, before being purchased by the United Fruit Company. The company was founded in the 1890s by William Streich to export bananas and sugar from the northwestern Cortés region of Honduras to international markets. It was bought by Samuel Zemurray around 1905, who took the company name for his own operation. Zemurray would later become the president of the United Fruit Company. Both Cuyamel and United Fruit are corporate ancestors of the modern-day firm Chiquita Brands International.
The Ekkai Maru was a cargo ship in the service of the Empire of Japan from 1941 till 1944. Built in Scotland by Scott Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. for Iquitos Steamship Co. in 1907, she was originally called the SS Manco and later renamed SS Morazán when she was sold to Vaccaro Brothers & Co. in 1921 and sent to Honduras. After being sold to Wallem & Co. of Hong Kong, she was captured by the Imperial Japanese Navy on December 8, 1941, during World War II. She was sunk by Allied aircraft in the Philippines on September 24, 1944.
The United Fruit Company strike of 1913 started on June 2, 1913. It was a worker-led strike organized by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in New Orleans against the United Fruit Company that was marked by violence.
