ABSTRACT
In terms of the historical demography of Latin America, Central America is probably the least well-known area, and within that region there is no doubt that the least-researched country is Honduras. This is a reflection of the country's marginal location in the Spanish Empire and of the fragmentary nature of the documentary record for the area. The controversy that exists over estimates of the native population in the New World is more difficult to resolve in Central America because of the relative lack of documentary evidence and the speed with which the population declined. In 1539 the Bishop of Honduras, Cristóbal de Pedraza, wrote that at the time Gil Gonzalez Davila and Hernan Cortes came to Honduras it had possessed almost as many people as Mexico, and in a later letter he described the country as having been as highly populated as Mexico and Peru.
