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Mayan civilisation reached the region that is now western Honduras around the fifth century AD. The Mayas remained in control for the next 300 years after which several different ethnic groups moved into the area from Mexico and Colombia. Contact with Europeans began soon after Christopher Columbus landed on the Honduran coast in 1502. During the early 1520s, the region was subjugated by a variety of conquistador expeditions, each of which laid claim to a part of it. Cortés, who arrived in 1525 via Mexico, imposed some order on the squabbling groups but after his departure, the local conflicts resumed as before. Only after the discovery of gold and silver deposits in the 1540s was some order imposed on the region; large number of slaves from Africa were then imported to work the mines.
Once the deposits were exhausted at the end of the 16th century, Honduras became a colonial backwater and remained so until the collapse of the Spanish empire in the Americas in the early 19th century. As Spanish power disintegrated in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, the Central American territories were in disagreement as to whether to join Mexico or establish their own federation of states. The latter course was chosen, with the acquiescence of Mexico. From a longer term perspective, this development clearly eased the process whereby the USA came to dominate the whole central American region. During the early 20th century, Honduras was governed by a series of caudillos, notably President Carias who dominated the country during the 1930s and 1940s.
Carias' rule is widely viewed as a key period in Honduran political history: while the peaceful environment he created allowed substantial social and economic progress to take place, this was at the price of serious internal repression and kowtowing to powerful foreign interests. Something which neither Carias, nor any of his immediate predecessors or successors, were prepared to tackle was the question of land reform, an issue that was the basis of much Honduran politics in the latter part of the 20th century. From the late 1950s onwards, weak civilian governments prompted the army to assume a greater role - launching several coups in the process.
This feature of Honduran politics became particularly important during the 1980s, when the Reagan administration in the USA sought to use Honduras as its main base for operations against the Sandanista government in Nicaragua. Many of the US-backed 'Contra' rebels were based in Honduras during the period of the Nicaraguan civil war. Soon after the war was settled in 1989, national elections were held. The two main parties, the Partido Nacional (PN) and the Partido Liberal (PL) fought a close contest for both the presidency, which was won by the PN candidate Rafael Leonardo Callejas and the National Assembly, in which the PL won a small majority of seats.
The 1990s, however, were dominated by the PL which gained control of both presidency and legislature in 1994 and 1997. The current president, who took office at the end of 1997 is Carlos Roberto Flores Facusse. The government has been faced with repeated outbreaks of civil and labour unrest throughout the late 1990s as the government has implemented austerity measures to address the country's economic difficulties. There has also been persistent pressure from both within and without the country to address the numerous human rights abuses which still continued despite the return to civilian government. Wary of antagonising the military, the government has moved carefully, although the military is gradually coming to terms with its loss of political influence. In a related issue, in late 1994 the government offered a long-overdue package of rights and social assistance to the indigenous Indian population, which had suffered especially severely at the hands of the military. However, the package was rejected (not unreasonably) as inadequate and the dispute between the communities and the government continues.
Honduran foreign policy during much of the 1990s was heavily influenced by economic matters, in particular the conclusion of free trade and other economic agreements with El Salvador and Guatemala. Relations with a post-Sandinista Nicaragua have remained very cool, as a result of the continuing dispute over territorial rights in the Gulf of Fonseca. |
