The Arab-Jewish Economic Presence in San Pedro Sula, the Industrial Capital of Honduras

This study addresses the following questions: to what extent did Arab and Jewish immigration to Honduras prior to the 1930s parallel larger migrations of these peoples to other countries of Latin America, and what economic role did Arab and Jewish immigrants play in the development of Honduras’s most important industrial city? Arab immigration represented more general Middle Eastern migratory flows to Latin America from the latter nineteenth century to the first two decades of the present century. On the other hand, my evidence, while sketchy, suggests that Jewish immigration to Honduras did not parallel broader processes documented for Latin America as a whole.