Honduras, 1850 to 1857:
Honduras entered the 1850s as a country on the edge of radical social and economic change. Over the course of the decade, Honduras would experience an industrial revolution, large-scale immigration to urban centers, and the full integration of its rural areas into a global capitalist economy. In 1850, however, these changes were still yet to come.
The construction of railroads had no doubt spurred significant economic growth in Honduras, but the overall economic expansion of 20% between 1843 and 1850 was moderate in comparison to the rapid growth experienced in the middle years of the 1850s. The lines between the capital and the main ports enabled Honduras to tap into a rapidly expanding Caribbean economy centered on New Orleans and based on the export of valuable New World commodities, including coffee and bananas grown in Honduras. Most of the economic growth experienced in the 1840s is attributable to the expansion of these and other cash crops. In 1850, manufacturing remained almost entirely preindustrial. The ‘factories’ on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa and Trujillo were small and staffed by trained artisans manufacturing goods without any but the most rudimentary machinery. The largest industries, textiles and cement, together constituted only around 5% of overall economic output.
Politically, Honduras remained a conservative and authoritarian republic with suffrage narrowly distributed to the few thousand of its citizens with enough wealth to qualify and office holding reserved for an even smaller group of the wealthiest Hondurans. President José Coronado Chavez, selected by the Senate in 1849, held broad dictatorial powers. The vast majority of Hondurans had no political representation and, under the authoritarian 1842 Constitution, all citizens were stripped of the basic civil liberties that they had been guaranteed by the defunct Federal Republic of Central America.
The new decade began with ill omens. An unseasonably cold winter in 1849/1850 damaged many banana plants and left the remaining crop vulnerable to a new type of banana blight that infected Central American haciendas in the spring of 1850. The combined losses from the frost and blight resulted in a huge shortfall that year, moving production back down to 1840 levels. Fortunately, the poor banana crop primarily affected large hacendados who could absorb the loss, as cash crops were not yet commonly grown by peasants. The same blight a decade later could have sent tens of thousands into penury.
In August 1850, revolution again broke out in Cuba. To pursue the Spanish war in Morocco, the largest military expedition that Spain had attempted in decades, troops had been stripped from the colonies, including Cuba. Even after the conclusion of fighting in 1849, soldiers who would have been stationed in fortresses in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines were instead guarding mountain passes in the Rif. Cuban revolutions had noticed their island being stripped of soldiers and seized the moment. Using weapons pilfered from armories in 1846, Cuban revolutionaries armed themselves and captured the lightly defended forts of Havana harbor. The revolutionaries had perceived correctly that the Spanish army was too engaged in Morocco to spare a force sufficient to retake Cuba. Moreover, whereas the Havana liberals of 1846 had expected to be welcomed by a victorious liberal revolution in Spain, the revolutionaries of 1850 prepared in earnest for a Spanish invasion. When Spain did send a force to the island in January 1851, they found all the ports under rebel control and their invasion force too small to establish a beachhead.
Pictured: Crowds in Havana cheer the news that a Spanish invasion was repulsed in January 1851
There were discussions in Madrid of sending a larger force — potentially abandoning northern Morocco to do so — but these were arrested by US intervention. The US Congress issued a statement in April 1851 supporting Cuban independence and invoking the Monroe Doctrine, raising the threat of a war that an overstretched Spain could not hope to win and which would endanger its other colonial holdings. The other major event influencing the Spanish decision to not reinvade was report of a general slave revolt. With the island in turmoil and many Spanish planters leaving for Puerto Rico or Europe, huge numbers of Cuban slaves took control of the sugar plantations on which they worked, disobeying orders, destroying machinery for sugar production, and killing any overseer who dared stop them. While not openly abolitionist, the revolutionaries in Cuba were focused on defending against Spain and were not willing to divide their forces to defend slavery. From the Spanish perspective, any reinvasion of Cuba would now risk war with the USA and require a lengthy occupation of the island to put down the ‘servile revolt’ and hunt down the inevitable bands of maroons. In summer 1851, King Carlos VI decided that no invasion fleet would be sent after the hurricane season passed.
Unwilling to lose Cuba to the crown entirely, however, King Carlos VI declared on the 18th of July 1851 he had heard the demands of the Cuban people and would grant them their independence, appointing his youngest brother Fernando Maria José as King Fernando I of the Kingdom of Cuba. When the news reached Havana months later, Cuba’s revolutionaries were divided on how to respond to the unexpected announcement from Madrid. Liberals though there were, many Cuban revolutionaries had sympathies for monarchy and believed that society needed the stability of a monarch. The deciding factor was US President Millard Filmore’s refusal to support Cuba should they reject the Spanish declaration. Absent US support and divided internally, Cuba’s revolutionaries accepted the Spanish offer and welcomed King Fernando, who disembarked at Havana in December 1851.
President Chavez was the victim of poor luck. His presidential term was at the beginning of the industrial transformation in Honduras, for whose difficulties he was blamed, and did not remain long enough to see the fruits of industrialization. The growth of even small factories in the early 1850s had brought hundreds of peasants to Honduran cities. The early industrialists did not adequately prepare for this migration and the peasants were confined to small shantytowns, where all kinds of vices proliferated. The Church agitated against the brothels and public drinking they saw among the peasant workers, societal ills which they — unfairly — blamed on President Chavez. When Coronado Chavez’s first term approached its end, his moderate and sensible stewardship of state was overlooked and overshadowed by the economic hardship of the 1850 banana blight and the new urban slums that grew larger and more problematic every year. The Senate, strongly influenced by the negative opinion of Coronado Chavez held by the Church, elected not to renew President Chavez’s mandate for another four years.
Instead, in November 1853, the Senate appointed as president Juan Nepomuceno Fernández Lindo y Zelaya, a longtime conservative politician — one of the few from Comayagua and all the more prominent because of it — and freshly returned from a brief five month stint as President of El Salvador beginning and ending with coup d'etat. Juan Lindo was a trusted and respected figure among Honduran conservatives and sought out by those who wanted a steady hand on the wheel.
Pictured: Juan Lindo, the third President of Honduras
That Coronado Chavez should have been accused of lacklustre economic management was all the more unfortunate because it was in 1853 that the first mechanized loom was imported into the country. As it had in England and the USA, the power loom transformed the Honduran textile industry. Whereas textile factories in Honduras had previously been assemblages of skilled weavers practicing their trade in the same building, the introduction of the power loom allowed for the massive deskilling of textile work. With power looms, not only could an untrained peasant produce textiles, but an untrained peasant workforce could produce a previously unheard amount. Moreover, power looms were just the tip of the iceberg. The 1850s saw a large-scale importation of new industrial technologies from Europe, impacting agricultural processing as well as manufacturing. These inventions allowed Honduras to experience an unprecedented economic boom in the 1850s and created a true industrial society, where unskilled peasants are turned into an urban proletariat engaged in mechanized production.
The issues created by peasant migration into the cities — which were so concerning to the Church and the main reason Coronado Chavez did not receive a second term — did not disappear with the election of Juan Lindo. Early industrialists were very eager to staff their factories, usually pulling workers from their own haciendas. Cut off from the family, communal, and religious ties of rural life, the new peasant workers experienced low morale and many turned to drink. The industrialists had also failed to adequately prepare for the movement of people to cities. Originally, most industrialists had conceived of factories as part time ventures, whose workforces could be swelled with peasant labor during slack times in agriculture; peasants who could be sent back into the fields during the planting and harvesting seasons. As a consequence, worker housing in Honduras was shoddy and temporary. Workers were either skilled artisans, who already lived in urban areas, or peasants whose brief stints in the cities did not require more than shacks or tents.
Even by the early 1850s, this original plan was being abandoned. Industrialists quickly saw the immense profits to be reaped from factory production and were encouraged to keep peasant workers in the cities rather than let them return to the farms. The shift to a more permanent working population was not, however, paired with an improvement in worker living conditions. Peasant workers were still expected to live in tents or shanties and without their families. It was these living conditions that fostered the culture of drunkenness and licentiousness that so offended conservative and Catholic opinion. The problem became worse every year of Coronado Chavez’s presidency, as more factories moved more peasants into the cities. The issue really escalated, however, post-1853, when the textile industry exploded and prompted the migration of hundreds of peasants every single year, creating their own shantytowns at the edge of Honduran cities.
Pictured: Slums and shanties built on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa in the 1850s
The issue of the peasant workers was resolved only gradually in the mid-1850s. The symptoms of the issue were treated first, led by the Catholic Church. New services were established for the peasant workers — and in Tegucigalpa a new church — in a concerted effort to get them to abandon sin, with a special focus on the abuse of alcohol that was rampant in the shantytowns. Civil administration, supported by the employers themselves, also did their part to crackdown on alcohol abuse. In 1855, Tegucigalpa became the first Honduran city to ban public drunkenness, as well as severely limiting who could sell alcohol and at what times. This ordinance was soon copied by other major Honduran cities.
The root of the problem also gradually came to be addressed, as industrialists came to terms with the idea of factory workers as a permanent population disconnected from agriculture. The single biggest change was allowing the families of peasant workers to move to cities with them. Whereas industrialists had previously only allowed the male workers themselves to move, by the mid—1850s more factories agreed to permit the movement of wives and children, sometimes even parents. By the late 1850s, factory workers still lived in shantytowns slum on the outskirts of cities, but they did so with their families as part of a new permanent laboring population; a population that had not existed at the beginning of the decade.
The creation of a new mechanized production system staffed by a permanent industrial working class in the mid to late 1850s was a major blow to the skilled artisans who had made up the previous system of manufacturing. The hardest hit group were skilled weavers, who found their industry entirely displaced by the much cheaper industrial goods, although weavers were far from the only industry impacted. These skilled artisans were the main opponents of the industrialization occurring at the time and swelled the ranks of illegal political clubs and liberal revolutionary groups.
Fortunately for President Lindo, the growth of a new liberal opposition among skilled workers was matched by the decline of factional tensions among the Honduran elite. In light of the enormous amounts of money to be made, the pressing issues of previous decades faded in importance among the Honduran ruling class. Previous disagreements over political liberties and the role of the Church remained, but most wealthy Hondurans were focused on carving out their own lucrative niche in the industrial economy and supported policies to expand and prolong the economic boom. The shared economic interests of conservative and liberal hacendados and factory-owners outshone their other differences and created a strong pro-business consensus within the Honduran government. The suggestions of the Sociedad de desarrollo were approved almost reflexively during this period. This consensus among the ruling class was stable largely because of the structure of the Honduran economy. Factories in Honduras were usually owned by small groups of merchants and hacendados, who often sourced the labor from their own rural estates. The costs of entry into this industrial economy were comparatively low and it was very rare for any of these business groups to own more than one factory. Overall, this created the conditions for fair and balanced competition between small firms in which virtually the entire upper class had the means and opportunity to participate.
The new pro-business consensus had a major impact on Honduras’s foreign and trade policies. Although tariff rates had declined throughout the presidencies of Coronado Chavez and Juan Lindo, they still remained high compared to the free trade period during the Federal Republic and many bureaucratic barriers to trade remained. The continued difficulty of cross border trade became a major issue in the mid-1850s. The flourishing textile industry in Honduras was extremely dependent upon imports: cotton, coal, and machinery from the USA; and indigo from El Salvador. The profit margins on factories in the 1850s were highly dependent upon the price of these imports, which was artificially inflated by tariffs and the general difficulty of moving goods across the border. Restrictions on the indigo and dye trade with El Salvador stood out as particularly grating, as that commerce was so integral to the textile industry and a little more than a decade ago that border had not existed. In February 1856, Congress voted to sharply cut tariffs across the board and greatly simplify the import process. In addition to showing the strength of the new pro-business bloc, this move demonstrated the new trade relationship at the heart of the Central America economy, the shared economic interests of Salvadoran planters and Honduran industrialists.
The idea of common interests between El Salvador and Honduras was an idea encouraged by the largest trade partner of both, the USA. Firm in their dominance of American politics, the ideologues of the Democratic Party in the 1850s envisioned a major role for the USA in the Caribbean at the heart of an economic empire responsible for producing the agricultural produce — cotton, tobacco, sugar, coffee — upon which industrial society depended. For the most ambitious men of the Democratic Party, this dream was coupled with the reintroduction of slavery across the Caribbean. US President Franklin Pierce and his Secretary of State William Marcy saw a natural alliance of interests between the commodity-producing countries of the Caribbean; an opportunity for the USA to check against an incursion of Britain or Spain into its economic empire.
In April 1856, under US auspices, a conference was convened in Havana between senior delegations of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and, of course, Cuba — the countries most connected to the USA by commerce and supportive diplomatically. It was presided over by the US ambassador to Cuba, William Robertson, who used to conference to pontificate on the burgeoning economic and cultural ties between the nations present and indicated that the USA would protect the trade routes between these five nations and itself. Ambassador Robertson then proposed a treaty of mutual defense between the countries; in reality, considering the lacklustre militaries of all the Caribbean nations, a collective guarantee from the USA. All of the representatives present signed the Havana Treaty and forwarded it for ratification by their governments — in Cuba, the Cortes approved it against the wishes of King Fernando, who had been forced to accept a limiting constitution in 1853, much to his chagrin. In Honduras, the government looked favorably on the treaty. Honduras had no navy with which to protect an ever more important trade in the Caribbean and the treaty promised US protection at the minimal cost of pledging to assist El Salvador and Nicaragua in the unlikely situation that they were attacked. President Juan Lindo signed the Havana Treaty in May 1856 and it was quickly ratified by the Senate.
The US push for a ‘commercial empire’ in the Caribbean did not end with the Havana Treaty. The US ambassador in Central America, Beverly Clark, had been watching the massive growth in cross border trade in the 1850s, particularly the transformation of Honduran ports and railroads into an entrepot for coffee from the entire region. Clark wrote to his superiors at the US State Department and received permission to pursue a reintegration of the Central American republics. From the US perspective, the independence of each of these nations unnecessary limited commerce, and thus the potential profits to be made by American merchants through the export of the region’s main commodity: coffee. His plan thus approved, Beverly Clark visited each of the Central American presidents in turn and, depending largely on a signed letter from US President Pierce, convinced each to attend a conference on regional integration and commerce in San Miguel in March 1857.
Pictured: US Ambassador to the Central American republics, Beverly Leonidas Clark
The San Miguel Conference was convened with the clear intent of recreating the defunct Republic of Central America in some form. Although all the presidents had fought for independence and secession only decades before, the boogeyman of liberal domination had largely vanished and none were openly opposed to reunification so long as the states retained the final say vis-a-vis the federal government. From the opening of the conference, then, the discussion was always for a loose confederation with a weak federal government and strong states.
This proposal attracted varying degrees of enthusiasm from the assembled heads of state. Honduras’s Juan Lindo and El Salvador’s Francisco Dueñas were the most open to reunification. The use of Salvadoran indigo in Honduran textile plants and the export of Salvadoran commodities through Honduran railroads and ports were now key to the economies of each state. This created a popular pressure on both sides of the border for greater integration. President Dueñas was particularly eager, as failure could signal the end of his political career in perpetually unstable Salvadoran politics.
Pictured: Salvadoran President Francisco Dueñas
Nicaragua’s José Maria Estrada was also strongly in favor of the return to a federation. Since independence, Nicaragua had been bedeviled by the constant threat of liberal revolution emanating from Leon and incursions by the British and their Miskitu allies along the Rio San Juan, beginning with British gunboats seizing San Juan del Norte for the Miskitu Kingdom in 1848. President Estrada hoped that federation would resolve several of these problems by providing a unified conservative front against liberal revolution and the British. President Estrada was also eager to flatter Ambassador Clark and thus keep the goodwill of the USA, which he knew was essential to preventing more of eastern Nicaragua from falling under the sway of the Miskitu King George Augustus Frederic II.
Pictured: Nicaraguan President José Maria Estrada
Costa Rica and Guatemala were the least convinced of the utility of a new federation. Costa Rica had always been distant and aloof from the rest of Central America and — as encouraged by the tutelage of his uncle-in-law, Braulio Carrillo — President Manuel Bonilla was skeptical of the benefits of being tied to the other republics. Guatemala’s President Mariano Paredes was also cool to the idea of federation, despite the fact that Guatemala, with its huge coffee and indigo plantations, was positioned to benefit substantially from any such federation. Guatemalan reluctance was likely due to the influence of Pedro de Aycinena, Foreign Minister, Vice President, and
éminence grise of Guatemala, who had a strong personal motive to prevent federation and shield Guatemala from outside influences that could have weakened the extraordinary power his family wielded over national politics.
Pictured: Costa Rican President Manuel Bonilla (left) and Guatemalan President Mariano Peredes (right)
The essential shape of what was to be the ‘Confederation of Central America’ was quickly decided among the three supportive members: Juan Lindo, Francisco Dueñas, and José Maria Estrada. The Confederation would have no powers or revenues except those granted it by the states and state law would always nullify the decisions of the federal government. The most important feature of confederation would be a free trade zone among its members, with no customs, borders, or tariffs between the states. To the key constituencies — Salvadoran indigo and coffee planters, Honduran industrialists, Nicaraguan ranchers — this was the crucial part of the Confederation.
Although mollified in that their own state governments would supersede federal law, Mariano Peredes and Manuel Bonilla were still unconvinced of the benefits of confederation. This was the stage of the San Miguel Conference at which Beverly Clark played a crucial role. Meeting with Peredes and Bonilla separately, Clark warned each that Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua were going to form a union with or without Guatemala and Costa Rica. He also implied that the USA would not look favorably on a refusal to join the confederation, an important issue to both Guatemala and Costa Rica in their territorial disputes with Mexico and Colombia, respectively. Thus coerced by Ambassador Clark, Mariano Peredes and Manuel Bonilla both agreed to join a future Confederation of Central America and joined the Honduran, Salvadoran, and Nicaraguan presidents in hammering out the details of the new union.
It was decided that the Confederation of Central America would have its own president, vice president, and unicameral legislature, the Confederation Congress. The members of the Confederation Congress, two from each state, would be chosen by the senates of each of the member states. A president and vice president would then be selected by the Confederation Congress from its membership. This indirect system was a product of an unwillingness to grant the Confederation government any real power and a reflection of the anti-democratic political systems already existing in the states. No tariffs or border controls of any sorts would apply between the states and provisions were made for the mutual recognition of corporations registered in one state by the others. On the 27th of March 1857, the assembled presidents signed the San Miguel Agreement, establishing the Confederation of Central America.
It is hard, as a historian, to overemphasize how transformational the decade prior to confederation was to Honduras. In 1847, Honduras was a peasant economy geared towards subsistence farming, largely cut off from the outside world, and with almost no production to speak of. In 1857, Honduras was fully integrated into the global economy and had a burgeoning industrial base. The construction of railroads in the late 1840s proved critical, connecting the Honduran interior to the booming Caribbean economy. This transformation was particularly important for the peasant farmers who constituted the vast majority of the Honduran population. Railroad access afforded all Hondurans the opportunity to sell produce, particularly coffee and bananas, to export markets. By the mid-1850s, peasants began to take advantage of this new opportunity in large numbers, choosing to grow cash crops rather than the food crops they had traditionally cultivated. The other major societal change was the emergence of the textile industry. The Honduran textile industry created a population of some 5,000 permanent urban industrial workers, a group that had never previously existed in Central America. This new proletariat, employed on mechanized looms imported from Europe, was capable of production on a scale far beyond that imaginable a decade earlier. Textile manufacturing in 1857 alone produced goods more than twice the value of the entire Honduran economy in 1850. The windfall profits of this industry were absorbed by the traditional ruling elite, now transformed into the capitalist class in Honduras.
Pictured: The inside of the Rooker y Valdes factory in Trujillo, one of the largest textile mills in Honduras
