Honduras

HE HAD struggled mightily against a howling storm that threatened to smash his ship against the very coast he had just discovered. When at last he got free of the treacherous waters, Christopher Columbus reportedly sighed: “Thank God we have got out of these depths!” The Spanish word for depths, honduras, evidently stuck. That, at least according to some history books, is how Honduras was named.

Today, Honduras is far easier to leave​—or to reach—​than it was for Columbus. It is one of the seven small countries on the narrow neck of land that connects North and South America. With about five million people inhabiting 43,000 square miles [112,000 sq km] of land, it is neither the largest nor the most populous country in Central America. But it is the most mountainous. At 15 degrees north latitude, both its Caribbean and Pacific coasts bask in tropical warmth, while the interior highlands are much cooler.

From the mountains, pine clad up to their pinnacles, to the undulating lowland jungles where the famous Honduran mahogany and cedar grow, on to the humid swamps and beyond to the palm-fringed beaches and lagoons of the Caribbean seaboard, this land has scenic beauty aplenty to magnify the Creator and to satisfy the soul.

The people are equally varied and interesting​—Indian, white, black, and a beautiful admixture of all three races. The Maya Indians were the first to come. Where they came from nobody knows for certain.

There are striking similarities between the Maya pyramids and the ziggurats of Egypt and Babylon, and there are interesting parallels in religion as well. The worship of the Maya, with its multiple gods and its belief in the immortality of the soul and punishment after death, was not far from Babylonian religion. Nor were these beliefs greatly altered by the advent of Christendom.

Christendom entered the land by force. Spanish conquerors converged on Honduras in 1524. As was their custom, they imposed the Spanish language and the Catholic religion on the natives. To this day, some 95 percent of Hondurans are Catholic. The colonial period ended some three centuries later when independence was declared in 1821. The Spanish were not the only ones eager to exploit this land teeming with flora and fauna and abundant in gold and silver. However, subsequent invaders were called not colonists but pirates. William Parker and Sir Francis Drake both menaced the Honduran coast in the 1570’s.

[Map on page 148]

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HONDURAS

Capital: Tegucigalpa

Official Language: Spanish

Major Religion: Roman Catholic

Population: 5,011,107

Branch Office: Tegucigalpa