Yearbook 2008
Honduras. In early October, Honduras’s congress approved the government’s proposal to allow the country to join Alternative Bolivarian para las Américas (ALBA), the Latin American cooperation organization created and led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The opposition chose to cast its votes in the congressional vote.
The high crime rate in Honduras continues to be an important item on the government’s agenda. Among other things, a law was passed that increased the powers of the police, but both the Supreme Court and human rights groups objected to giving more power to an already corrupt police force and called the law “a monument to impunity”. In protest of the corruption in the country, the head of the Prosecutor’s Association, Victor Fernández, also hungered for 38 days in April and May in front of the congress building in Tegucigalpa and later created “The Movement for Dignity and Justice”.
- ABBREVIATIONFINDER: Click to see the meanings of 2-letter acronym and abbreviation of HN in general and in geography as Honduras in particular.
Foreign Minister Milton Jiménez was forced to resign in January after a video, showing how he beat a traffic police and refused to do an alcohol test, was posted on the YouTube website and then shown on TV.
Population 2008
According to Countryaah reports, the population of Honduras in 2008 was 8,317,359, ranking number 96 in the world. The population growth rate was 2.200% yearly, and the population density was 74.3361 people per km2.
History. – R. Villeda Morales carried out his mandate (1957-63) along the line drawn by President Juán Manuel Gálvez, in a desperate attempt to create social structures in one of the most backward countries in Latin America. He supported advanced legislation in favor of workers, initiated land reform, designed a road network capable of reaching fertile but distant areas, and tried to fight the scourge of illiteracy. In foreign policy he remained neutral towards Castroism and allowed handful left-wing groups to express their ideas. This attitude of his earned him opposition from parliament, which opposed his government action. It also aroused the mistrust of the conservatives and the military, who, ten days before the elections that were to designate his successor, dismissed him under the accused of pro-communism and exiled him to Costa Rica on October 3, 1963. The coup d’état brought col. Oswaldo López Arellano and the breakdown of relations with the USA, which considered the coup an attack on democracy. Relations between the two countries were re-established in January 1964 on the formal promise of a return to legality. The elections of February 1965, won by the Nationalist Party, gave the Congress the possibility of designating constitutional president, until 1971, col. López Arellano, supported by the army. The Honduras he met again the heel of the military dictatorship, he saw the reforms in progress fade and he plunged back into disorders and insurrectional attempts. Disputes with neighboring countries began again, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador.
With El Salvador, Honduras it endured a short but bloody war (14-30 July 1969), suffering bombing and invasion, with thousands of deaths. The conflict, known as the “football war”, broke out on the pretext of a football match in Tegucigalpa between the teams of the two countries. The deepest reasons existed for a long time: in fact, a mass of Salvadorans (about 300,000), who emigrated to the Honduras, steal work from the local workforce. The war quickly ended, thanks to the intervention of the OAS, with the withdrawal of the Salvadoran troops that had invaded Honduras.
The elections of March 28, 1971 brought Ramón Ernesto Cruz to the presidency of the republic, soon overthrown by a coup that brought former president López Arellano back to power (December 4, 1972). The usurper, in turn, accused of corruption, was deposed (April 22, 1975) and replaced as president by col. Juán Alberto Melgar Castro. A subsequent coup (8 August 1978) has now brought gen. Polycarp Juán Paz García.