Book Review

Honduras: Peeling
Away the Myths
LAURA MACDONALD
Alison Acker. Honduras: The Making of a Banana Republic.
Toronto: Between the Lines, 1988.
onduras is one of those nations which, left to its

H own devices, might have lingered indefinitely in

relative obscurity. Instead, by an accident of
geography, it has been drawn into a webof imperialist
machinations, nd thrust into international headlines through
its involvement in the Central American maelstrom. Yet
despite the recent boom of literature on Central America,
there are still few books available in English on Honduras.
Students and activists interested in Central America are
often left without a historical context in which to understand
Honduras' present actions, and have little defense against
the stereotypes and misinterpretations which colour public
opinion about the country. The whole evolution of the
Central American peace process shows, however, that events
in the region cannot be adequately interpreted without an
understanding of the complex motivations of each of the
five countries involved.
In Honduras: The Making of a Banana Republic, Alison
Acker, a professor at Ryerson Poly technical Institute in
Toronto, and a Central American solidarity activist sets out
to redress this ignorance, in the process producing a highly
accessible and concise history. Acker highlights the main
events and personalities in the life of a nation thus far best
known for the manner in which it has catered to foreign
desires (first the Western appetite for the banana, and
second, US political objectives in Central America) rather
than for its own unique history.

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Studies in Political Economy

The book begins with an interesting account of the im-

ages of Honduras presented in popular culture, ranging from
the comic adventures of Donald Duck in 'Hondorica' (east
of San Banador and north of Inca Blinca), to the arrogant
and racist reflections of various Western politicians, nove-
lists and travel writers. US playwright Eugene O'Neill who
went to Honduras in 1910 to pan for gold wrote, for ex-
ample, "After having been in all the different zones of this
country I give it as my fixed belief that God got his in-
spiration for Hell after creating Honduras;" he later called
the Honduran people "the lowest, laziest, most ignorant
bunch of brainless bipeds that ever polluted a land,',l A
1984 editorial in a Honduran newspaper, El Tiempo, pro-
tested against more recent portrayals of Honduras: "Every
time the name of our country appears with great prodigality
in the international press, it means that something bad has
happened. Never, or hardly ever, are we mentioned for some
good action, for something we could really feel proud of. ,,2
As Acker's book shows, Honduras' poor reputation is
not entirely undeserved, given the often servile response of
the country's political and economic elites to the demands
made on them by foreign interests. Yet simplistic condem-
nations of Honduras' role, which fail to trace the roots of
the country's behaviour in its historical development, or to
point out the unique features of that history, risk overlooking
important factors which could lead to change. Many of the
events and processes traced in the book will be familiar to
students of Central America. But from Acker's historical
survey we can extrapolate some of the factors which differ-
entiate Honduran development from that of the more well-
known hotspots in Central America: its greater poverty and
economic backwardness; a lesser degree of popular unrest;
important although limited social reforms, and a relatively
militant and influential labour movement.
After the Spanish conquest, Honduras was left an eco-
nomic backwater because of the failure of colonists to find
an easily exploited, exportable commodity, as happened in
some of the more "successful" colonies. The colonial eco-
nomy thus settled into subsistence production: "Ambitious
settlers simply moved on; the less ambitious settled into

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life on the hacienda, overseeing the raising of a few cattle

and taking little interest in national development.,,3 Few
new settlers arrived to augment the indigenous population
which had been decimated by imported diseases. Colonial
authorities created two political centres: one in Comayagua
and one in Tegucigalpa. According to Acker, Honduras faced
the decline of Spanish power in the late 18th century, ill-
prepared for independence, with a weak and dispersed elite,
and without a major export crop, a national market or a
unified political system.
When the independence movement came to Central
America, it was entirely an elite concern. The provincial
governor of Honduras even prohibited the ringing of bells
to celebrate Central American independence in 1823, in or-
der to avoid awakening mass enthusiasm. Political debates
among the four percent of the population of Spanish origin
eventually gave rise to a division between Liberal reformers
who favoured free trade, and upper-class Conservatives who
revered the church and tradition, and tended to support some
indigenous rights. Honduras did give birth to one of the
few visionaries of the period, Francisco Morazan, a Liberal
political and military leader and champion of Central Amer-
ican unity. The immature and fractious Central American
states were not committed to this ideal, though, and Morazan
was eventually defeated because of his opposition to the
church and his repressive tactics. His liberal reforms were
overturned, and Honduras, which lacked a strong Conser-
vative alternative because of the weakness of its oligarchy,
was beset by civil strife.
In this context, there was little economic or social
development for a century, and, like the other Central Amer-
ican states, Honduras soon fell under first British and sub-
sequently American financial control. Weaker than elites in
neighbouring countries, Honduran landowners were incap-
able of generating the capital necessary to develop native
industry or agriculture; the fairly widespread acceptance of
liberal ideals also increased their willingness to open up
the economy to foreign ownership. When US interest turned
to bananas, therefore, Honduran fruit was ripe for the pick-
ing. Local growers received little support from the state;

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huge foreign banana companies easily took over the sector,

and were rewarded with enormous profits. A highly depend-
ent, heavily capitalized plantation enclave was injected into
the local subsistence economy. The "banana empires"
gradually diversified and took over banking, fishing, in-
dustry and commerce, gaining enormous domestic political
influence in the process - as did their patron, the US govern-
ment.
At the same time, the creation of an enclave economy
also brought in its wake a large mass of wage labourers
(both imported workers from the Caribbean and former Hon-
duran peasants) who suffered abysmal working and living
conditions. In the face of company and government repres-
sion, worker militancy arose fairly early. After a general
strike in 1954, the United States pioneered in Honduras a
technique that would become common in the rest of Latin
America, that of undermining Latin American union militan-
cy by funding passive alternative unions. Increased
mechanization of the banana industry also followed the 1954
strike, and dismissed workers who had to return to subsis-
tence production created an active peasant movement close-
ly linked to the labour unions.
For reasons which are not entirely clear from Acker's
account, the Honduran labour movement generated neither
a political party as occurred in some other enclave econo-
mies (for example, Jamaica), nor the armed struggle which
arose in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador. Apparently
because the labour movement posed no real political threat,
and because Honduras lacked the strong and intransigent
oligarchy of its neighbours, the Honduran state was able to
give in to some of the reformist pressure which came from
the popular movement and from the Kennedy administra-
tion's Alliance for Progress. An agrarian reform was enacted
in 1962, although it was only sporadically enforced, and
failed to provide adequate technical support, credit, and
market access for beneficiaries. Peasant pressure on the state
for true land reform has continued, though, particularly
since 16,000 campesinos were displaced by US-backed con-
tra forces.

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The weakness of the Honduran oligarchy has historically

been reflected in the weakness and instability of the
country's political system. For example, 117 different presi-
dents took office between 1824 and 1933. Yet at the same
time, says Acker, there was a transformation occurring from
the semi-feudal caudillo system of decentralized rule by
local strongmen, to a volatile two-party system in which
the two parties represented regions and group loyalties more
than fixed ideologies. As in many other Third World states,
the weakness of the political system and its lack of popular
legitimation contributed to the growing strength of the mil-
itary, the most centralized and disciplined element of Hon-
duran society. Growing US economic and technical support
also enforced the strength and autonomy of the military,
particularly after the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua made
Honduras an important US ally.
Despite the return of civilian rule in 1981, the army and
the United States government have retained ample control
over decision-making in Honduras. And as Acker shows,
despite the rain of dollars, US intervention and the presence
of the contras have undermined key elements of social har-
mony: human rights, democracy, sovereignty, the national
economy. But Honduran subservience cannot be entirely
blamed on US pressure:

A history of compliance and corruption allowed US militariza-

tion to take place. Honduran authorities made a bargain with
the devil, but it was not for the first time ...In the end US in-
tervention merely encouraged the worst features of Honduran
society and discouraged the best, building on a process of
economic intervention begun one hundred years earlier. (p.122)

US intervention has finally unleashed popular protest, par-

ticularly against the impact which the US backed contras
have had on the national economy and society. Peasants
and workers, human rights activists, neighbourhood organi-
zations, women's groups, and even some businessmen have
protested against the contra presence. However, Acker offers
few reasons to hope that Honduras can forge a new path,
given the country's subservient record, and the lack of a
revolutionary alternative:

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In such a traditional, isolated, and divided society, with such

a long history of exploitation and chaos and so short an ex-
perience of genuine development or public will, the way ahead
was likely to prove as rocky as the roads of the Honduran past.
(p.138)

Acker's account of Honduran history is often frustrat-

ingly brief, and shares the empiricism of most recent litera-
ture on Central America. These qualities clearly improve
the book's accessibility to the interested public. More ad-
vanced students will wish to extend the book's analysis,
however, and to place Honduras' experiences in comparative
perspective.
Ironically, while Acker hopes to give us a better view
of the Honduran people than is normally available, the book
does not give us a full sense of how ordinary peoples' lives
have changed under the influence of the broader national
transition from a pre-colonial indigenous society to a "semi-
feudal" colonial subsistence economy to a banana enclave.
Several key questions could be posed: What was the effect
of the Conquest on subsistence agricultural practices and
diet? What is the nature of the evolving interaction between
the plantation enclave and subsistence peasant production?
Have there been the same enormous increases in urbaniza-
tion and the size of the informal economy that other Latin
American countries have experienced? How does wide-
spread corruption affect the potential for economic develop-
ment? Without a better understanding of these questions,
we are unable to adequately account for Honduras' profound
underdevelopment. Acker's book risks leaving the impres-
sion that Honduras started out poor because of the lack of
a key export crop, and that it stayed poor because of the
introduction of one. A more sophisticated explanation of
Honduran poverty is important for effective Canadian soli-
darity work, since Honduras' dubious status as the second
poorest nation in the hemisphere is the reason given by
CIDA officials to justify the selection of Honduras as a
core "project country" for Canada's aid programme.f
It is also important to attempt to situate Honduras' ex-
perience within a broader regional and global perspective.
Honduras' historical travails did not occur in isolation, and

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constitute one scene in the larger drama of the gradual

spread first of mercantilist and then of capitalist relations
from Europe to the rest of the globe. Eric Wolf's Europe
and the People Without History shows how bananas were
just one of a number of commodities which were mobilized
as part of a "new worldwide agricultural specialization" to
fill the new mass demand of the metropolis.S Honduras'
turn away from British and toward US patronage in the late
19th century did not occur solely because of Honduran
leaders' disenchantment with expansionist British diploma-
cy and their admiration for the US spirit of liberty, as Acker
suggests," but also because of the growing economic as-
cendance of the United States over Britain, particularly in
the Western hemisphere.
An emphasis on Honduras' position in the changing world
economy also points toward elements which the country
shares with its Central American neighbours. Despite the
differences which arose from distinct socio-economic fac-
tors, each of the Central American nations have been in-
corporated in a similar way into the world economy, and
whether they like it or not, their fates are closely linked.
Enormous dependency, underdevelopment and political in-
stability exist in each of countries of Central America (with
the partial exception of Costa Rica) because of their tradi-
tional heavy reliance upon a single export crop. These char-
acteristics were only exacerbated in Honduras' case by the
fact that it took on this role in the world economy during
a period when plantation agriculture had come to be largely
dominated by metropolitan corporate capital, rather than
earlier, when individual proprietary planters were still do-
minant?
Since that time, however, all of the Central American
countries have been subject to the same vicissitudes of world
commodity markets, the same evolutions in the international
economic order, and the same changes in US definition of
its strategic and economic interests in the isthmus. Xabier
Gorostiaga and Peter Marchetti suggest, for example, that
all of the Central American countries except for Nicaragua
have now made a new transition from "banana republics"
to "subsidized and geopoliticized economies" because of

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the economic impact of US intervention.f Despite the pro-

blems experienced by the Central American Common Mar-
ket (especially, as Acker points out, for Honduras, the
weakest economy of the five), the Central American states
are also drawn together by the small size of each of their
internal markets which makes some degree of economic co-
operation imperative. In the past decade, moreover, the pro-
found crises of authoritarian states in three of these nations
have had multiplier effects, spreading beyond national boun-
daries, and occasioning disastrous results in each of the
other countries. While it is correct to detail those internal
factors which make Honduras unique, it is also essential to
appreciate the broader regional and global dynamics in
which the country is situated in order to understand the
nature of the current crisis, and possibilities for a way out.
Acker's essential pessimism about trends in Honduras
leads her to implicitly endorse the statement made by one
woman in the opposition movement:

We campesinos are used to planting seeds and waiting to see

if the seeds bear fruit. We're used to working on harsh soil.
And when our crops don't grow, we're used to planting again
and again until they take hold ....But it is hard to think of change
taking place in Central America without there first being changes
in the United States. As we say in Honduras, "Sin el perro, no
hay rabia" - without the dog, there wouldn't be rabies.9

However, Acker may be overexaggerating the inevitability

of Honduran capitulation to US pressure. Even in Honduras,
the current economic and social crises and growing popular
pressure have led the state to seek to distance itself from
US policy, however tentatively. Honduras may have been,
as Acker suggests, only a "silent partner" in the Central
American peace accord, but the fact that the agreement was
reached at all was a major defeat for US policy in the region.
Internal forces for change are just as unlikely to lead to
a significant shift in policy in the United States as in Hon-
duras. An inoculation against the epidemic of US imperi-
alism can only be achieved by concerted action amongst
all of the five Central American countries involved.
Westerners too, though, must look beyond the stereotypes

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which have been assigned to these so-called "banana re-

publics," and perceive them as distinct nations with their
own unique histories. Acker's highly readable account as-
sists in this process by peeling off some of the myths around
Honduras, the archetypal banana republic.

Notes

1. A. Acker. Honduras: The Making of a Banana Republic. (Toronto:

Between the Lines, 1988), p. 22.
2. Ibid, p.25.
3. Ibid, p.33.
4. See the report "Paved with Good Intentions: Canadian Aid to Hon-
duras," forthcoming from the Latin American Working Group, Toron-
to, for a critical analysis of the impact of Canadian aid given the
nature of the projects chosen and the militarism and corruption which
have become widespread in recent years.
5. Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History p. 318.
6. Acker, Honduras .. p, 58.
7. See the description of this transition in George L. Beckford, Persistent
Poverty: Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third
World (London: Zed Books, 1983), pp. 84-113.
8. Xabier Gorostiaga and Peter Marchetti, "The Central American
Economy: Conflict and Crisis" in Nora Hamilton, et al, eds., Crisis
in Central America: Regional Dynamics and US Policy in the 1980s
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), p.128.
9. Quoted in Acker, Honduras ... p. 107.

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