ABSTRACT
Honduras is primarily a mestizo country in which 80 percent of the rural lower classes are subsistence farmers or landless squatters, and the lower class accounts for two-thirds of the population. In 1890, urban artisans and workers in light industry formed Honduras's first mutualist organization, La Democracia. In 1961 the National Federation of Honduran Peasants, a quasi-radical organization, responded to inequities in society caused by foreign domination by organizing in the north, especially among the tenants on banana company lands. Graciela A. Garcia enrolled in the trade union and revolutionary movements in Honduras in 1922 and began to organize the working class in the most exploited zones of the nation, the mining areas of San Juancito and the banana lands of the north coast. Victor Meza, social critic, labor analyst, political journalist, and professor of political science at the National Autonomous University of Honduras, has served time in prison for his antiestablishment views.
