N E X T J O U R N E Y . O R G

	During most of the 20th century, Honduras was, like its neighbors, a proverbial Banana Republic: poor, unstable, corrupt, and ecologically ravaged for the sake of one crop, the banana. The cost of getting bananas to US markets cheaply a few days after they were harvested included ongoing political unrest, large scale human rights violations, and ecological devastation. The northern coastal town of Tela was the center of the US controlled United Fruit (Chiquita Banana) in Honduras from 1912 to 1976. Today, in Tela, you can visit two abandoned ruins from the halcyon days of United Fruit: the former headquarters of United Fruit in Honduras (Tela Railroad Company), and the famed Tela Pier along which bananas were once transferred from railroad cars to ships. The Tela Pier is but a stump, a fraction of what it was before the coup de grâce of Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

BACK	HOME	NEXT