Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
stockraising,supplementedbysmall-scaleproductionofcorn,beans,and
yuca.
3
Agricultureintheregioncanbestbedescribedassmall-scalemono-
culturesandpolycultures.Extensiveplantingsofbananas,plantains,sugar
cane, and pastureland were few and geographically dispersed.
This situation started to change in the 1870s, when schooners from
U.S. ports began arriving with increasing frequency in order to purchase
bananas and coconuts. Around the same time, the Honduran national
government began to embrace export-oriented economic development
models. The institutionalization of nineteenth-century liberalism took
place during Marco Aurelio Soto's presidency (1876-1883). President Soto
imagined a national landscape filled with productive citizens transform-
ing tropical nature into wealth: ''We will take advantage of what Nature
has abundantly provided us. We will work so that the light of civilization
reacheseventhemostremoteforestsandthatthroughwork,blessedwork,
the lands will be made productive so that all Hondurans may enjoy the
benefits of universal progress.''
4
Soto's government turned this vision into
state policy via the Agrarian Law of 1877, which provided tax and other
financial incentives for cultivators to grow crops for international mar-
kets. Surprisingly, the legislation did not make any specific reference to
banana production, an activityalready initiated by small-scale cultivators
on the Bay Islands, a small archipelago lying to the north of Honduras's
Caribbean coastline.
TheabolitionofslaveryinJamaicaandelsewhereintheBritishCarib-
bean prompted both former slaveholders and ex-slaves to migrate to the
Bay Islands. In 1861, Britain transferred sovereignty over the islands to
Honduras. Shortly thereafter, schooners from New Orleans began arriv-
ing in Roatán and Utila, the two principal islands on which small-scale
cultivatorsgrewbothbananasandcoconuts.
5
''Alargemajority''oftheap-
proximately6,000inhabitantsonRoatánwereanglophone''Creoles,''and
most business transactions and other social activities took place in En-
glish.Islandresidentsimportednearlyalloftheirprovisions,buildingma-
terials, and general merchandise from the United States.
6
Ties to the His-
panic mainland were few and tenuous. When the Honduran government
declared the island of Roatán to be the only o
cial port of entry in 1879,
disgruntled residents on the islands of Utila and Guanaja appealed to the
British government. The British obliged the desires of their former colo-
nial subjects by sending a warship to Roatán so that the matter could be
''discussed'' with local Honduran ocials.
7
Threeyears later, in a measure
largely aimed at the English-speaking population of the Bay Islands, the
Honduran Congress declared Spanish the ocial language. Bay Islanders
