ABSTRACT
The sequence of boom and bust cycles in export commodities that occurred in southern Honduras since the end of World War II, is the most recent manifestation of a long history of uneven development. Since the Spanish conquest, the south underwent repeated attempts to develop the region and recurring periods of economic expansion and contraction. The Spanish conquest had catastrophic social and economic consequences on the region's indigenous peoples and caused their almost complete annihilation. The legacies of the Spanish conquest and colonization included not only social, political, and economic fragmentation, but also the start of existing inequalities. The considerable intellectual, economic, and political changes that characterized the century preceding independence in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica, were not matched in Honduras. The mechanisms of economic integration binding communities, market centers, and regions that developed during colonial times in those countries were virtually absent in Honduras.
