Background: Honduras, 1920s By the mid-1920s, many modern nations had built well-developed railroad networks and transoceanic ports. And recent innovations like the automobile and airplane were beginning to show great potential. For many people, correspondence and travel to distant countries was easier than ever before. Honduras, consisting mostly of mountains and highlands, found building this infrastructure difficult. Honduras’ capital, Tegucigalpa, was far from the Atlantic seaports in the north. Development of roads and rail in the rough highlands was difficult and expensive, and decades of political instability had weakened the country’s economy. U.S.-based banana-growing companies — In the 1920s, Atlantic seaports — built by fruit- heavily involved in Honduran growing corporations to export bananas — politics — were given land grants were Honduras’ main link to the outside world. and tax exemptions to build railroads along the north coast. The fruit companies built these rail networks to transport bananas from inland plantations to the coast, where they could be exported to America and Europe. While plans were made for the fruit companies to build a rail line connecting Tegucigalpa to the Atlantic coast, rough terrain and high cost led to the project being abandoned. The fruit companies had little interest in building a railway through Honduras’ highlands, where land was unsuitable for banana cultivation. Because corporate influences made the country’s primary industry exempt from taxes, only the fruit-growing companies had the money and manpower to complete the project. Without a link to the Atlantic, Tegucigalpa was isolated from the outside world. It would take around a week to bring mail from the capital to the north coast, where it could finally be sent by boat to its destination. Without a railroad to the Atlantic coast, mail from Honduras’ capital needed to be carried over mountains by a team of mules or oxen. 3
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