Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Tegucigalpa, or Tegus, as its inhabitants call it, is the capital of Honduras and the nation's political, cultural, and administrative center. Tegucigalpa originally emerged as a key mining settlement in the late 1500s under Spanish colonial rule. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Tegucigalpa has grappled with poverty, overcrowding, and unregulated urban development. The city's struggles reached a breaking point in 1998 when Hurricane Mitch struck with devastating consequences. Since the aftermath of the hurricane, the government has undertaken the restoration of Tegucigalpa's rich but deteriorating historic heritage as part of a broader campaign aimed at improving the quality of life for residents and visitors alike.

Landscape

Tegucigalpa is located in a small valley surrounded by the pine-covered mountains of south-central Honduras. The valley sits at an altitude of about 975 meters (3,200 feet) above sea level.

For much of its history, the area now encompassing what is the capital of Honduras existed as two separate cities, Tegucigalpa and Comayagüela, divided by the Choluteca River. Although the two cities merged in 1938, they have retained their distinct characters.

The Tegucigalpa bank features most of the capital's colonial-era architecture and sites of historic interest. The Old Town, with its narrow, twisting streets, is built into the slope of a steep hill. It contains the capital's main thoroughfare, the Boulevard Morazán, along which most of the city's upscale commercial and business settings are concentrated.

The Comayagüela bank, by contrast, is more industrialized and crowded, but less affluent. It features many shops and open-air markets that form the backbone of the capital's informal economy. Many of the half-million or so residents of Comayagüela live in impoverished settlements that sprawl from the city's edges into the foothills of the surrounding mountains.

Throughout most of the year, Tegucigalpa features tropical daytime temperatures, though nights are relatively cooler thanks to the city's high-altitude location. A pall of smoke frequently hangs over the city during the spring. The smoke is the combined product of slash-and-burn agricultural practices and Tegucigalpa's geography, which tends to trap pollution in the valley in which the city sits. This smoke is dispersed by the winds that accompany the rainy season, which begins in the middle of May and lasts through mid-October.

People

During the latter half of the twentieth century, a massive influx of migrants from rural, mountainous regions of Honduras moved to Tegucigalpa in search of relief from economic hardship. In the period between 1940 and 1980 alone, Tegucigalpa's population increased from fewer than 50,000 to over 400,000.

By 1989, less than a decade later, the city's population had skyrocketed to more than 575,000. That number would again double, and the capital had a population of approximately 1.527 million as of 2022. More than half the country's population lived in one of two cities, Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, which were growing at a rate of 2.75 percent per year. As climate disruption intensifies drought and disease, coffee growers and subsistence farmers have moved to Tegucigalpa in larger numbers.

Tegucigalpa's rapid population growth has severely strained the city's resources and infrastructure. The lack of sufficient housing and an adequate public water supply are two of the most pressing issues facing the city. Overcrowding has also led to the unchecked and unplanned growth of shantytowns. A majority of Tegucigalpa's inhabitants reside in extralegal settlements, where living conditions are generally harsh and dangerous.

Most Tegucigalpa residents are mestizos, descendants of indigenous and European people. The large majority are Roman Catholic, although is a strong and growing evangelical Protestant presence.

Economy

Tegucigalpa serves as the main center of industry in Honduras. The capital's economy nonetheless reflects the struggles of a country that is one of the most impoverished in Central America. City officials have promoted the growth of a light manufacturing sector that produces sugar and tobacco products as well as clothing and textiles. Tegucigalpa's job market has been unable, however, to accommodate the waves of young, rural emigrants who continue to flock to the capital. According to FocusEconomics, the unemployment rate in Honduras was 8.9 percent in 2022.

In an attempt to reclaim public spaces and restore sites of historic interest, Tegucigalpa officials relocated some of the city's more than two thousand informal vendors out of the city's main squares and thoroughfares and into alternative sites.

In addition to eliminating the squalor and chaos that the spread of unregulated marketplaces had brought to the capital's historic downtown, city officials embarked on an ambitious project to restore some of the capital's most emblematic buildings to their original colonial-era elegance. They hoped that such revitalization efforts would also contribute to making Tegucigalpa a safer and more inviting tourist destination.

Hurricane Mitch left a lasting imprint on Tegucigalpa's economic and physical infrastructure. Many zones located along the banks of the Choluteca River have never fully recovered from the flooding and mudslides that devastated the city in 1998.

Landmarks

Tegucigalpa's historic center is home to a number of churches built during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Among the most notable is the baroque-style cathedral of St. Michael Archangel, which features an elaborate façade of columns and pillars, and is dedicated to Tegucigalpa's patron saint. The Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, whose stained-glass shows in the influences of both African and indigenous cultures and the San Francisco church, which dates to around 1590 (making it the oldest structure in the city) are also of historical importance.

Just outside the capital lies the Gothic-style Basilica of Our Lady of Suyapa, the patron saint of Honduras. Stories of miraculous occurrences attributed to the saint draw thousands of the faithful to the shrine from all over Honduras and beyond.

In addition, Tegucigalpa's museums attract visitors and scholars from the world over. The rich and ancient histories of the various Honduran indigenous cultures are on display at the Villa Roy National Museum, which features collections of traditional costumes and crafts and archeological objects.

The Museum of the Republic documents modern Honduran history beginning with country's 1821 achievement of independence from Spain and includes a display of bulletproof vintage limousines used by a succession of Honduran dictators. The Military History Museum displays personal possessions of past Honduran leaders as well as both antique and modern weaponry, while the Sala Bancatlan features artifacts that document Honduran history. The National Art Gallery displays the work of Honduran painters from the colonial era to the present day. The Museum of Natural History includes exhibits of native birds, mammals, and reptiles, and showcases the extraordinary biodiversity of Honduras.

Tegucigalpa also has two famous monuments. The capital's central park contains a statue of the Central American statesman Francisco Morazán (1799–1842), a native son of Tegucigalpa and a Honduran national hero. The national park located on Tegucigalpa's northern side contains a massive hilltop statue known as Christ of the Picacho. Although the statue has been in place only since 1997, it has become one of the city's most distinctive landmarks. El Picacho Park also contains a traditional Asian garden, the gift of the Taiwanese government, and the Honduras National Zoo.

History

The site of present-day Tegucigalpa had been occupied by indigenous people for centuries when the first Europeans arrived in the mid-sixteenth century. Spanish imperial forces discovered that the surrounding hills were rich in minerals, particularly silver, and quickly established Tegucigalpa as Central America's premier center for mining operations.

Some historians have claimed that Tegucigalpa translates from the local language as "Silver Hill," while others have disputed this, claiming that the indigenous people did not mine silver and therefore would not have chosen such a name for the site. Some have suggested that a more accurate translation of the capital's native name may be "colored stones."

For three centuries, Comayagüela served as the Spanish colonial capital. In 1880, the capital officially moved across the Choluteca River to Tegucigalpa. Many historians believe the transfer was motivated by the desire of the then-president of Honduras, Marco Aurelio Soto (1846–1908), to move closer to the location of a nearby large mining company in whose operations he held a major interest.

Since then, Tegucigalpa and its neighbor, Comayagüela, were incorporated as the Capital District in 1938. Six decades later, in 1998, Hurricane Mitch flooded the capital and washed out most of the highways as well as the hillsides. Shanties were set up in the wake of the hurricane. The United States offered temporary protected status to Hondurans affected by the hurricane in 1999; that immigration status was revoked in 2018. Recovery efforts remained ongoing twenty years later.

Over the years, Tegucigalpa has been the scene of numerous protests, some of which became violent. Demonstrators have taken to the streets there over government corruption, the murder of an environmental and human rights activist, and contested presidential election results, among other issues.

Crime and violence have become rampant in Honduras, including in Tegucigalpa. Drug cartels and criminal gangs operate with relative impunity. However, while still high, the murder has been declining, with 36 murders per 100,000 residents in 2022, compared to 85 per 100,000 in the 2010s, according to the US Peace Institute.

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