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Honduras: The Politics of Exception and Military Reformism (1972—1978)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Rachel Sieder
Rachel Sieder
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Politics at the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London.
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Abstract

The specificities of contemporary Honduran politics are explored by examining both national historical development and the cooption of popular protest by military reformism in the 1970s. The dynamics underpinning demobilisation of the popular movement after 1976 are explained with reference to both the agrarian reform implemented by the military and certain features of local political culture, such as patronage and clientelism, which – it is argued – were utilised selectively to coopt a sector of the organised labour movement. Divisions within the popular movement, in part a product of traditions of statelabour relations, were also significant in weakening the popular challenge.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , February 1995 , pp. 99 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 Over 150 people were ‘disappeared’ during this period, most of them between 1982 and 1984. The recent report by the Honduran human rights ombudsman into military involvement in forced disappearances and other human rights violations in the early 1980s puts the number of ‘disappeared’ as high as 184. See Comisionado Nacional de Protectión de los Derechos Humanos, Los hechos hablan por sí mismos: informe prelimínar sobre los desaparecidos en Honduras 1980–1993 (Tegucigalpa, 1994)Google Scholar; see also the edited version in English, Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) and Human Rights Watch/Americas, The Facts Speak for Themselves: The Preliminary Report on Disappearances of the National Commissioner for the Protection of Human Rights in Honduras (New York, Washington and Los Angeles, 1994)Google Scholar.

2 On the 1980s see Schulz, Donald E. and Sundloff-Schulz, Deborah, The United States, Honduras, and the Crisis in Central America (Boulder, San Francisco and Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar.

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6 Contemporary analyses which attributed a political logic to certain groups on the basis of their position in the productive sphere provided, at best, only a partial explanation of the reformist experience in Honduras. See, for example, IHDER, 84 Meses de la Reforma Agraria del Gobierno de las Fuerzas Armadas de Honduras (Tegucigalpa, 1980); Cid, Rafael Del, Reforma Agrariay Capitalismo Dependiente (Tegucigalpa, 1977)Google Scholar.

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11 Ruhl, Mark J., ‘Agrarian Structure and Political Stability in Honduras’, Journal of Inter-American Studies (1984)Google Scholar.

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13 Ibid. p. 55.

14 Newson, Linda, ‘La Minenía de la Plata en la Honduras Colonial’, in Cáceres, Luís René, Lecturas de Historia de Centroamérica (San José, 1989)Google Scholar. On the labour question see Newson, Linda, The Cost of Conquest: Indian Decline in Honduras under Spanish Rule (Boulder, Colorado, 1986)Google Scholar.

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16 The Agrarian Law of 1924 created additional ejidos and reasserted the principal of expropriation of private lands for the purposes of ejido formation. Between 1924 and 1939, 34 government decrees were emitted declaring certain zones to be set aside as reserves for family lots in accordance with the Law of 1924. Stokes, William, ‘The Land Laws of Honduras’, Agricultural History, vol. 21, no. 3 (1947)Google Scholar.

17 Posas, Mario, ‘Política Estatal y Estructura Agraria en Honduras (1950–1978)’, Estudios Sociales Centroamericanos, no. 24 (1979), p. 41Google Scholar. It should be stressed that the peculiarities of the land tenure system did not guarantee the poor greatly improved access to subsistence lands. In particular, the mountainous terrain meant that a far smaller percentage of Honduras's national territory was suitable for agricultural purposes – in 1962 it was estimated that 60.8 % of the total surface area had a gradient of 40 degrees or more. Organización de los Estados Americanos (OEA), lnforme Oficialde la Misión 105 de Asistencia Técnica Directa a Honduras sobre Reforma Agraria y Desarrollo Agrícola, vol. 1 (Washington, 1962), p. 110Google Scholar. For a meticulous critique of the ‘resource abundance’ thesis see Durham, William H., Scarcity and Survival in Central America: Ecological Origins of the Soccer War (Stanford, 1979)Google Scholar.

18 Finney, Kenneth V., In Quest of El Dorado: Precious Metal Mining and the Modernisation of Honduras (1880–1900) (New York and London, 1987)Google Scholar; Finney, Kenneth V., ‘Rosario and the Election of 1887’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 59, no. 1 (1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Between 1867 and 1870 the government of José Mario Medina secured three substantial loans to build an inter-oceanic railway. In the 1860s these had a face value of some $6 million. However, most of the funds disappeared in commissions, corruption and loan servicing charges and by 1872 the railway project collapsed and Honduras defaulted on her loans. By the mid-1920s, capitalisation of the unpaid interest had left Honduras with an external public debt of nearly £30 million, one of the highest in the world on per capita basis. The debt was not successfully renegotiated until 1926 and only finally discharged in 1953. Gómez, Alfredo León, El Escándalo del Ferrocarril: Ensayo Histórico (Tegucigalpa, 1978)Google Scholar; Ross, Delmer G., Visionaries and Swindlers: The Development of the Railways in Honduras (Mobile, Alabama, 1975)Google Scholar.

20 Between 1900 and 1933, although there were only fourteen changes of government, 159 military engagements were recorded. Posas and Del Cid, La Constructión del Sector Puiblico, p. 81.

21 For the fruit company position see May, Stacy and Plaza, Galo, The United Fruit Company in Latin America (New York, 1958)Google Scholar; also McCann, Thomas P., An American Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit (New York, 1976)Google Scholar. For an anti-imperialist critique, Kepner, and Soothill's, El Imperio del Banano (Mexico, 1949)Google Scholar is well documented and still one of the best texts available. More contemporary critiques are to be found in Valades, Edmundo, Los Contratos del Diablo (Mexico, 1975)Google Scholar, and Valeriano, Enrique Flores, La Explotación Bananera en Honduras, 2nd edition (Tegucigalpa, 1987)Google Scholar. For a contemporary critique of the fruit companies effect on Honduras's historical development see Rivas, E. Torres, ‘El Surgimiento del Enclave Bananero: Su Significatión en el Proceso de Desarrollo’, in Interpretatión del Desarrollo Social Centroamericano (San José, 1971)Google Scholar. Laínez, and Meza, take a similarly critical position in ‘El Enclave Bananero en la Historia de Honduras’, Estudios Sotiales Centroamericanos no. 5 (1973)Google Scholar. See also Slutzky, Daniel and Alonso, Esther, Empresas Transnationales y Agricultura: El Caso del Enclave Bananero en Honduras (Tegucigalpa, 1980)Google Scholar. Karnes, Thomas, Tropical Enterprise: The Standard Fruit Company in Latin America (Louisiana, 1978)Google Scholar remains one of the most competent texts on SFCo.'s development. For an examination of the impact of the fruit companies on the development of San Pedro Sula in the early twentieth century see Euraque, Dario, Merchants and Industrialists in Northern Honduras: The Making of a National Bourgeoisie in Peripheral Capitalism, 1870s–1972 unpubl. PhD diss., Madison, Wisconsin, 1990Google Scholar.

22 Argueta, Mario, Tiburcio Carías – Anatomía de una Epoca: 1923–1948 (Tegucigalpa, 1989)Google Scholar; Barahona, Marvin, La Hegemonía de los Estados Unidos en Honduras (Tegucigalpa, 1989)Google Scholar.

23 On the US-backed overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 and Honduras's role in these events see Gleijeses, Piero, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the US, 1944–54 (Princeton, 1991)Google Scholar; Schlesinger, Stephen and Kinzer, Stephen, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Adams, Richard, Crucifixion by Power (Austin, 1970)Google Scholar; Jonas, Susanne, The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death-Squads and US Power (Boulder and Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar.

24 Ropp, Steve C., ‘The Honduran Army in the Socio-Political Evolution of the Honduran State’, The Americas, no. 4 (1974)Google Scholar.

25 White, Robert, Structural Factors in Rural Development: The Church and the Peasant in Honduras, unpubl. PhD diss., Cornell University, 1972, p. 104Google Scholar.

26 New York Times, 3 October 1963. Documentary evidence of UFCo's involvement in the 1963 coup is sketchy. However, following the (relatively mild) land reform introduced by the Villeda Morales administration in 1962, the company had brought considerable pressure to bear in the US Senate, ultimately securing significant revision of the law. See Brockett, Charles D., ‘Public Policy, Peasants and Rural Development in Honduras’ Journal of Latin American Studies, no. 19 (1984), p. 71Google Scholar.

27 The best texts on the 1954 strike are: Posas, Mario, Luchas del Movimiento Obrero Hondureño (San José, 1981)Google Scholar; MacCameron, Robert, Bananas, Labor and Politics in Honduras: 1954–1963 (Syracuse, 1983)Google Scholar; Meza, Víctor, Historia del Movimiento Obrero Hondureño, 2nd edition (Tegucigalpa, 1991)Google Scholar.

28 On the origins of the PCH see Posas, Mario, Conflictos Agrarios y Organisatión Campesina: Sobre los Origenes de las Primeras Organizaciones Campesinas de Honduras (Tegucigalpa, 1981)Google Scholar.

29 CEPAL-FAO-OIT-SIECA-IICA, Tenencia de la Tierra y Desarrollo Rural en Centroamérica (San José, 1973), p. 70Google Scholar. It should be noted that this figure included some 16,000 banana plantation workers. Between 1952 and 1966 there was a 20% increase in the number of minifundios, but the area of land occupied by this sector shrunk by approximately 25 %, reducing the mean average size of a minifundio from 5.5 manzanas in 1952 to 3.5 manzanas by 1965. Honduras, República de, Censo Agropecuario (Tegucigalpa, 1952Google Scholar and 1965/6).

30 See Lombraña, Martiniano, Historia de las Organizaciones Campesinas en Honduras (La Ceiba, 1989)Google Scholar; Posas, Conflictos Agrarios; Fajardo, Allan, ‘Conversación con Clemente Gutiérrez: Apuntes para la Historia del Movimiento Campesino Hondureño’, Presencia Universitaria, Tegucigalpa, 07 1977Google Scholar.

31 In 1965 a small guerrilla foco led by PCH militants from FENACH was wiped out at El Jute, Department of Atlántida. The fiasco of El Jute led to the split of the PCH in 1967 when the Maoist Partido Comunista de Honduras – Marxista-Leninista (PCH-ML) was set up. For a first-hand account see Garciá, Luis, El Jule (Tegucigalpa, 1991)Google Scholar.

32 The PCH favoured cultivating this sector as part of a progressive nationalist front led by workers and campesinos. The PCH-ML rejected this strategy. On the doctrinal debate see PCH, Línea General Político del PCH, mimeo (Tegucigalpa, 1975)Google Scholar; Becerra, Longino, Revista de la Universidad, no. 7 (Tegucigalpa, 1973)Google Scholar; Frassinetti, Antonio Murga, ‘La Burguesía Nacional: una Falacia’, Presencia Universitaria (Tegucigalpa, 10 1975)Google Scholar; PCH-ML, Programa: Segundo Congreso Nacional mimeo (Tegucigalpa, 1975)Google Scholar.

33 The official result allocated 35 seats alone to the PL out of a total of 380 contested municipalities.

34 The San José Protocols were introduced in an attempt to shore up falling government revenues and imposed a 30% increase on import tariffs, cuts in the commercial supply of credit and additional consumer taxes on a wide range of goods.

35 Personal interview with Rigoberto Sandoval Corea, Tegucigalpa, 27 Nov. 1990.

36 Ibid.

37 Membership figures of the rural unions are notoriously difficult to calculate accurately; one authoritative source puts the total number at 70,000 by 1972; White, Structural factors in Rural Development, p. 119.

38 Durham, William H., Scarcity and Survival in Central America: Ecological Origins of the Soccer War (Stanford, 1979), p. 59Google Scholar.

39 Amador, Jorge Reynaldo, Los Sucesos de la Talanquera Enfocados por la Prensa Hondureña, unpubl. Licenciatura diss., Universidad Nacional de Honduras, 1975Google Scholar.

40 Little has been written on the role of patronage and clientelism in the formation of the Central American states. There is, however, a wealth of literature on Mexico: for two stimulating discussions see Purcell, Susan Kaufman, ‘Mexico: Clientelism, Corporatism and Political Stability’, in Eisenstadt, S. N. and Lemarchand, René, Political Clientelism, Patronage and Development (London, 1981)Google Scholar; Guillermo De la Peña, ‘Local and Regional Power in Mexico’, Texas Papers on Mexico, Working Paper, University of Texas at Austin, Paper No. 88–01 (undated). For an alternative, neo-Weberian interpretation of patronage politics see Abercrombie, Nicholas and Hill, Stephen, ‘Paternalism and Patronage’, British Journal of Sociology vol. 27, no. 4 (1967)Google Scholar.

41 Rosenberg, Mark B., ‘Narcos and Polfticos: Th e Politics of Drug Trafficking in Honduras’, Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs (Summer-Fall, 1988), p. 146Google Scholar.

42 Personal interviews with members of first promotion militar, Tegucigalpa, March / April 1993. This point is also made in Schulz and Sundloff-Schulz, The United States, Honduras, and the Crisis in Central America, p. 47.

43 Nunn, Frederick M., The Time of the Generals: Latin American Professional Militarism in World Perspective (Lincoln and London, 1992)Google Scholar.

44 Personal interviews with members of the first promocion militar, Tegucigalpa, March/April 1993.

45 Arellano, Oswaldo López, ‘Plan Nacional de Desarrollo: Conceptos Fundamentales’, speech reproduced in INA-PROCCARA, Estrategia de Desarrollo y Reforma AgrariaLa Opción Hondureña (Tegucigalpa, 1975)Google Scholar.

46 de Honduras, República, Decreto-Ley No. 170 (Tegucigalpa, 1975)Google Scholar.

47 Personal interviews, March and April 1993.

48 El Dia, 2 May 1973.

49 Tiempo, 14 Jan. 1974.

50 See comments made by Rush, Rigoberto Padilla, El Dia, 2 05 1973Google Scholar.

51 Tiempo, Tegucigalpa, 10 April and 27 Nov. 1975.

52 Tiempo 2 March 1974.

53 Although the importance of bananas in Honduras's export profile had steadily declined since the 1940s, they still accounted for 42.6% of total export revenues in 1968. Ellis, Frank, Las Transnacionales del Banano en Centroamérica (San José, 1983), p. 405Google Scholar.

54 For more o n UPE B see ibid.

55 McCann, An American Company, pp. 187–9. In 1973 Dole held 45% of the US market compared t o United Brands 35%. Karnes, Tropical Enterprise, p. 294.

56 ‘Informe de la Comision Investigadora al Pueblo Hondureno’, Tiempo, 16 May 1975. See also Flores Valeriano, La Explotacion Banamra en Honduras.

57 Boatman-Guillan, Edward, ‘In Honduras a Mule is Worth More than a Congressman’, in Peckenham, Nancy and Street, Annie, Honduras: Portrait of a Captive Nation (New York, 1985), pp. 38–43Google Scholar.

58 Tiempo, 1 May 1975.

59 Tiempo, 26 June 1975 and 24 July 1975.

60 La Prensa, 26 October 1976.

61 La Prensa, 19 October 1976.

62 See the reaction to the CAHSA sugar mill expropriations, Tiempo, 20 July 1976.

63 Porfirio Hernández, Historia de Isletas (unpublished; undated). Hernandez was one of the leaders at Isletas imprisoned following the military intervention in February 1977. See also Posas, Mario, La Autogestion en el Agro Hondureño: El Caso de la Empresa Asociativa Campesina ‘Isletas’ (EACI) (Tegucigalpa, 1992)Google Scholar.

64 NACLA, , Report on the Americas, vol. xi, no. 8, 1977Google Scholar.

65 Tiempo, 31 October 1977; Inforpress, no. 248, 6 March 1978.

66 Instituto Nacional Agrario, Resumen de Datos Generates del Sector Reformado, mimeo (Tegucigalpa, 1978), p. 22Google Scholar.

67 Instituto Nacional Agrario, Listado de Grupos Campesinos Beneficiarios de la Reforma Agraria, mimeo (Tegucigalpa, 1978)Google Scholar.

68 Approximately 6, 900 UNC members received some 31, 000 hectares, while independent groups (numbering some 5, 400) received 35, 000 hectares. The EACs (less than 2, 000 members) received nearly 5, 000 hectares; Instituto Nacional Agrario, Plan Operativo Anual, mimeo (Tegucigalpa, 1978), p. 4Google Scholar.

69 See Instituto Nacional Agrario, Plan Operative Anual: 1977 and Plan Operativo Anual 1975, mimeo (Tegucigalpa, 1977 and 1978)Google Scholar.

70 For more detail see Santos, Benjamin, Datospara el Estudio del Movimiento Social Cristiano (Tegucigalpa, 1981)Google Scholar.

71 In 1978 50% of land allocated under the agrarian reform was organised in cooperatives, compared to 4% in EACs; Instituto Nacional Agrario, Kesumen de Datos Generates, mimeo (Tegucigalpa, 1978), p. 22Google Scholar.

72 Personal interviews with Pedro Brizuela, San Pedro Sula, 30 March 1993; Allan Fajardo, Managua, 20 March 1993; and Oscar Aníbal Puerto, Tegucigalpa, 5 April 1993.

73 Tiempo, 4 December 1974.

74 Personal interview with Victor Calix, Tegucigalpa, 2 November 1990. At the time of interviewing Calix was president of ANACH.

75 According to Robert White's authoritative study, church leaders had begun to move away from their alliance with the campesino movement as early as 1974. See Structural Factors in Rural Development: The Church and the Peasant in Honduras, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Cornell University, 1977, p. 296.

76 Personal interview with Marcial Euceda, Tegucigalpa, 2 April 1993.

77 These were channelled through CONCORDE'S credit institute, the Fundación Hondureña para el Desarrollo (FUNHDESA).

78 Personal interviews with Marcial Euceda, Tegucigalpa, 2 April 1993; Luciano Barrera, San Pedro Sula, 30 March 1993; Allan Fajardo, Managua, 20 March 1993.

79 Divisions led to the formation of new rutal unións, including the Unión Nacional Auténtica de Honduras (UNCAH), a left-wing grouping formed in 1977 and the rightwing Alianza Campesina de Honduras (ALCONH), formed by Reyes Rodríguez in 1980 when he was finally ejected from ANACH. Today there are over a dozen campesino organisations in Honduras.

80 PCH, III Congreso: Informe de Balance de la Actividad del PCH, mimeo (Tegucigalpa, 1977), P. 37.

81 See, for example, the attack made on the ‘ultra-left’ by the PCH in 1977; PCH, Programa del PCH: III Congreso, mimeo (Tegucigalpa, 1977), p. 26.

82 The main groups were the Frente Morazanista de Liberatión Nacional (FMLNH); the Fuerzas Populares Lorenzo Zelaya (FPR); the Movimiento Popular de Liberación Cinchonero (MPL); and the Honduran branch of the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores Centroamericanos (PRTC).

83 INA, Resumen Básico de los Grupos Campesinos Beneficiarios de la Reforma Agraria, mimeo (Tegucigalpa, 1985), P. 5.

84 One 1981 study claimed that 66.7 % of all beneficiaries had received less than 3.5 hectares each (the 1975 agrarian reform law set a lower limit of 5 hectares). IHDER, La Tenencia de la Tierra en Honduras (Tegucigalpa, 1981), p. 14. Fo r details of conditions on the flagship agrarian reform settlements see INA-IICA, Diagnóstic de los Proyectos La Masica, Guaymas, San Bernardo, Monjaras-Buena Vista, San Manuel, mimeo (Tegucigalpa, 1980).