“Trujillo has a great future, and it always will.” The town has always been, on paper at least, a very attractive, well-situated and strategic place. It sits in a large, deep bay; it has access to the fertile Aguán Valley and is a launching point on a natural land route leading to Olancho and Nicaragua.
It is also true that Trujillo has always been a bit out of the way, and other cities in Honduras have been stealing its spotlight. Tela was founded a year before Trujillo. Its status as the capital moved to Comayagua in 1821, soon after independence from Spain.

Trujillo is a time capsule, and that is perhaps why it is so attractive. The town has seen many booms and busts, and today it is quaint, handsome and not overbuilt — a rarity in Honduras. While nearby Tocoa and the Aguán Valley are booming, Trujillo is still a sleepy town where one can stroll safely at any time of day or night. There are no malls, no supermarkets and no Megapacas and the biggest grocery store is still located on the main square. The town’s children play in the streets, unbothered by worries. It is a place that time forgot. 

TRUJILLO AND ROATAN CONNECTION

Columbus was not spared the embarrassment.

PUNTA CASTILLA

Punta Castilla, or Punta Caxinas, just 21 kilometers north of Trujillo, is an extremely important place in the history of the Americas. It is the first place where Christopher Columbus set foot on the North American continent on Aug. 14, 1502. Sadly, neither Hondurans, nor Honduran authorities recognize that fact, let alone celebrate Punta Castilla’s historical importance.

There are interesting parallels with the Venezuelan communist government treatment of Columbus’ legacy in that country. The handsome bronze statue of Columbus that marked the spot where he landed for the first time in South America on August 5, 1498 is no more. Activists destroyed that Paria Peninsula statue in 2004 and all statues dedicated to Christopher Columbus in Venezuela were destroyed in 2009. Sadly Honduras is slowly following the Venezuelan revolutionary example of vandalism and self hatred.

NOT CELEBRATING

On May 18, 2025, Trujillo should have celebrated 500 years since its founding. Still, there was very little fanfare to mark the city’s half a millennium of existence. Making it this far is quite the feat, as the city—for example—is 40 years older than St. Augustine, Florida.

Before the anniversary, many promises were made by Tegucigalpa ministers, but none were kept. Trujillo’s mayor Hector Mendoza was encouraged to leave it up to the central government. Yet, when the date of the celebrations approached, nothing was finished.

Even Christopher Columbus was not spared embarrassment. His four-foot-tall concrete and diminutive statue, located one block from the main plaza, was neither repaired nor properly disposed of. The great navigator’s “midget” bust remained missing a head and a hand. No one bothered to invest a bit of money to even rudimentarily repair the statue ahead of the town’s anniversary.

Trujillo’s central park paving wasn’t finished, and the park’s gazebo wasn’t constructed. The entrance gate to the city wasn’t built, nor was a new dock on the shore. Xiomara Castro, president of the country, failed to show up— let alone send anyone of consequence to represent the Tegucigalpa authorities. The most important officials were from the local Red Cross and the army. Ironically, perhaps, the guest of honor was Moonup Sung, ambassador of South Korea.

There was a rumor that the King of Spain might show up.

While some might see incompetence in this, others see a hint of malice and even hatred. The lack of appreciation for 500 years of Catholic sacraments, civilization, written language, law and education is beyond perplexing. Sadly, Honduran authorities promote ideologically driven hatred of Christianity, Spain, European culture, and the halfhearted celebrations in Trujillo were yet another example of that phenomenon.

According to Jon Thompson, an English amateur historian and a 30-year resident of Trujillo, at one point there was a rumor that the king of Spain might show up for the occasion. While King Felipe VI had plenty of more enjoyable activities on his calendar, he wisely stayed away from a place where his presence would not be welcome.

500 YEARS EARLIER

On May 3, 1524, the feast day of the holy Cross, Tela became Honduras’ first city. Triunfo de la Cruz, as the settlement was originally called beat Trujillo by almost exactly one year.

In 1525, after declaring his loyalty to Hernán Cortés, Francisco de las Casas decided to return to Mexico but left his deputy, Juan López de Aguirre, to establish a settlement in Honduras. De Aguirre was not happy with Puerto Cortés and traveled east to Trujillo.

Ultimately de Aguirre left the task of founding its first capital, Trujillo, to his deputy, Juan de Medina. On May 18, 1525, the settlement of Trujillo—named after a town in the province of Cáceres, Spain—was founded. Medina became Trujillo’s first mayor.

A few years later, in 1532, Trujillo obtained the status of a town, and in 1539 its church was declared a cathedral by Pope Pius II. Bishop Cristóbal de Pedraza became Honduras’ first bishop.

ROOTLESS PIRATES

In the mid-1500s, Trujillo became a gold and silver depot for mines in Honduras’ interior. There was a security problem, as the lack of sufficient population made the port an easy target for pirates attempting to enrich themselves by raiding Spanish ships and settlements.

The threat of Dutch and English pirates incentivized the Spanish to construct Trujillo’s Santa Bárbara Fort. The pirate raids in the Caribbean were part of the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648), a primarily religious conflict in Europe. The pirates often made it their life’s work to raid Catholic, be it Spanish or Portuguese, ports and destroy ships.

As part of the war against Spain, the Dutch West India Company instructed pirate Jan Janszoon to sack Trujillo and possibly intercept the Spanish silver fleet there. In July 1633, Janszoon attacked Trujillo and burned two-thirds of the houses covered by palms. The governor of Trujillo paid 20 pounds of silver as ransom for the pirates to leave.

Pirates based on Roatan raided Trujillo several times in fact, causing death, destruction, economic downturns and crisis. English pirate, William Jackson, sacked Trujillo in 1643. He arrived with 16 ships and 1,500 men and took the city without much of a fight.

In the 1600s, the nearby Bay Islands had no Spanish settlers whatsoever, and the Paya Indians living there were coerced into helping the pirates with provisions, careening their ships, and logistics. As a result, Spanish authorities made the decision to resettle the Paya Indians who lived in the Bay Islands to Trujillo and later to Río Dulce, Guatemala.

GARIFUNA AND WALKER

For Trujillo, the best part of 1700s were largely uneventful. That changed in 1797, when three ships departed the island of Saint Vincent carrying thousands of Garifuna as cargo. The Black Caribs had just lost a war with the British and were considered too rebellious to manage in the eastern Caribbean. Only half of the roughly 5,000 Garifuna survived the voyage across the Caribbean.

Trujillo found itself as a constant target of attacks.

The ships with the conquered Garifuna stopped in Jamaica and eventually arrived on Roatan to abandon the Black Caribs there. The Spanish quickly found out about the British actions, and as Roatan was not able to support such a number of new arrivals, the vast majority of the Garifuna were transported to Trujillo.

Trujillo became the epicenter for the dissemination of the Garifuna and their culture along the coasts of Central America. In the 1840s, Garifuna communities that allied themselves with Spanish loyalists, moved east and west of Trujillo. They eventually settled as far as Belize to the west and to the east in Pearl Lagoon, Nicaragua.

In 1821 Trujillo lost its status as the capital of Honduras. The capital of the newly formed republic was transferred to Comayagua, and eventually to Tegucigalpa. This date marked yet another period of decline for the town.

In 1860, Trujillo had a bout with another troublemaker, this time an American. As Great Britain was preparing to surrender the Bay Islands back to Honduras, a group of Roatanians invited buccaneer William Walker to come to the island and help them preserve their independence from Honduras.

Representing some anti-Honduran Bay Islanders, Roatan resident Uwins Elwyn traveled to New Orleans in March 1860 to look for Walker and invite him to come to the island. Elwyn essentially asked for his help in reversing the upcoming transfer of the archipelago from Great Britain to Honduras. As Walker was absent, Elwyn met with his deputy, Callender Fayssoux.

Elwyn proposed that Walker’s filibusters would travel to Roatan at their own expense, but once there, their expenses would be covered by the islanders. The subsequent plan was to help Walker with his invasion of Nicaragua

The proposal quickly materialized into concrete action. Walker sent some of his filibusters —essentially soldiers of fortune— to Roatan in June. He even stayed on the island from June 16 to 21, 1860. As the British caught wind of the possible damage his actions could cause to the U.S.-British agreement on returning the islands to Honduras, tensions rose.

As British authorities realized that the American was up to no good, Walker left Roatan for Cozumel. One way to look at it is that it was Roatanians who brought about Walker’s ultimate demise in Trujillo just a few months later.

On Aug. 5, 1860, Walker landed his ship with 91 filibusters near Trujillo and attempted to take the city. He failed and, after a chase, was eventually arrested by British navy officer Nowell Salomon.

The British surrendered Walker to Honduran authorities and he was tried by Honduran military court on charges of piracy and “filibusterism.” Walker, 36, was executed on September 12, 1860 by order of president José Santos Guardiola. William Walker, a prominent freemason, was buried in Trujillo’s Catholic cemetery.

BANANAS AND CABBAGES

When bananas became a booming industry in Central America in the 1890s, Trujillo also began to thrive. It became a refuge for American criminals fleeing justice in the North. Some were famous, others infamous.

In 1896, Trujillo hosted William Sydney Porter, known by his pen name O. Henry, when he fled justice in Texas, where he was charged with embezzlement. He was not the only American taking advantage of the lack of an extradition treaty between Honduras and the United States. His drinking companion in town was Al “Alphonso” Jennings, an Oklahoma lawyer turned train robber. They both hid in Trujillo, spending their time drinking and adventuring.

O. Henry began writing his book of short stories, “Cabbages and Kings,” while in Trujillo. His most well-known contribution to Honduras was coining the phrase “banana republic,” which is still used to describe the country and, in fact, many other countries around the world.

“It was upon this hint that the minister of war acted, executing a rare piece of drollery that so enlivened the tedium of executive session. In the constitution of this small, maritime banana republic was a forgotten section that provided for the maintenance of a navy,” O. Henry wrote in “Cabbages and Kings.”

From the 1890s onward, Trujillo was a banana town. The boom lasted about half of a century, but come to an abrupt stop. Banana operations were scaled down there in the 1930s, as United Fruit’s Castilla Division, which grew Gros Michel bananas, closed down operations due to Panama disease that decimated the region’s banana crops.

World War II came to Trujillo’s rescue when the U.S. built a small Navy base at nearby Punta Castilla. The Americans also established a seaplane base there. As the war subsided, Trujillo lingered on into the second half of the 20th century.

The 21st century for Trujillo was a roller coaster of emotions, expectations and, ultimately, disappointments. In 2001, the government approved the Honduran construction of the world’s largest vessel—a one-mile-long floating city for 90,000 residents. The 25-story-tall Freedom Ship was estimated to cost $8.5 billion. Its construction in the deep bay was expected to change Trujillo forever.

That project eventually fizzled out.
Around 2009, there were plans for Trujillo to become Honduras’ first charter city. President Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa, the country’s leader at the time and a native of Trujillo, strongly promoted the idea. However the concept of a charter city was not realized in Trujillo during the 2010s, but instead on Roatan with the implementation of Economic Development and Employment Zone (ZEDE) laws and the establishment of Próspera in the 2020s.

There were attempts to turn Trujillo into a minor cruise ship destination in the mid-2010s. The town was marketed as “Banana Coast” and promoted to cruise ships with a planned $50,000 seafront shopping center. The project ultimately faded.

In 1890s bananas became the boom industry.

Then there is the idea of building a housing community for retired Canadians looking for tranquility and warm weather. The project is called Alta Vista and is the brainchild of Randy Jorgensen, who made his fortune in the pornographic industry and promoting vice in Canada. Jorgensen has been in conflict, in and out of court, with the Garifuna, who claim that the land he acquired for his project was sold illegally.

The land owned by Canada’s so-called porn king was occupied by Garifuna activists, some armed with machetes and allegedly bused in from outside the area. The situation grows more complex from there. The Garifuna activists are affiliated with the Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña, or OFRANEH, and are believed to be supported by more powerful interests often overlooked. OFRANEH receives funding and training from organizations such as the Open Society Foundations. Larger global players also appear to be connected to developments in the small town of Trujillo.

“Trujillo has a great future, and it always will.” That potential is different from what many people think it is or would like it to be. It is a beautiful, quiet place soaked in history and contradictions. It is a place that time almost forgot. There are certainly more booms and busts ahead for the 500-year-old city by Trujillo Bay.

Healthier in Honduras

Honduras, while economically poor, is top notch in the Americas in a leading health indicator. It is the fourth healthiest country both in North and in South America as far as cancer rates are concerned. Honduras is one of the least affected by cancer countries in the Americas. Here USA leads the sad statistics with 367 annual cancer cases per 100,000, while Honduras has only 128. Only Belize, Guatemala and El Salvador have fewer cancers per person. According to the 2022 study by World Cancer Research Fund, Americans and Canadians have 300% higher cancer rates than Hondurans do. Out of 180 countries tracked, Honduras is number 128. The most infected countries are western, developed countries: Australia, New Zealand, Denmark and USA.

Pre-crime Criminals

Dozen countries are building a cyber prison control system that effectively will make any dissent or talking-about-dissent a punishable offence. For western societies it is a shift of paradigm from a society where an individual is presumed innocent, to where an individual is an automatic subject of pre-crime investigation by AI, social media monitoring, preventive policing and financial tracking. China already uses a combination of its cameras, social credit system, and snitching to keep their population from voicing any discontent. In Argentina, Javier Milei created an Orwellian Ministry of Security that is supposed to predict the “future crimes” of typically well behaving Argentineans.

Japan turning African

While European nations have been coerced to import migrant workers since 1970s, and migrants since 2000s, the low birth yet thriving economies of Japan, and South Korea have been given a pass. Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has become a tool for globalists to erode the Japanese phenotype. JAICA announced an Africa Hometown Initiative opening Japan to migrants to immigrants from Africa’s Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania. In response Japan’s authorities were contacted by huge amount of concerned Japanese. The controlled media attempted to gaslight the public calling the concerned Japanese “racist” and “xenophobic.” Japan’s population peaked in 2010 with 128 million, but the country is on track to implode to 70 million by 2060, with 40% of those Japanese being over 65 years of age.

2025 Hurricanes

It is almost over and the 2025 Hurricane season, June 1 to November 30, has been the lowest in a decade. It should be a bit of a surprise as in May 2025 NOAA predicted that the years hurricane Atlantic hurricane season, had only a 10% chance of a below-normal season. The average Hurricane season for the past 10 years had 18 tropical storms through September and so far in 2025 there has been eight. In fact 2025 is only the third time in modern record, after 1968 and 1992, went two weeks leading to peak season without an active named storm.

Digitalized Hondurans

In April 2025, Honduras signed a contract with Tech5, a Swiss technology company, to create a digital ID, digital foreign resident ID, digital driving license, firearms permit and later on digital wallets. These documents are planned to be accessible via a smart phone app on a “secure digital wallet.” In poor, rural Honduras smart phones are expensive, and lost or damaged frequently. Also many Honduran police officers, already used to frequent extrusion, will likely exploit errors on smart phones, apps with bribes. This state surveillance effort, a Honduran effort to do their part in fulfilling the Agenda 2030 plan, will likely become another white elephant paid by Honduran taxpayers.

Is the Honduran Court system corrupt? Yes. Is the Honduran Military penetrated by freemasons and incompetent? Yes. Is the Honduran Congress filled with inept and self-serving psychopaths? Yes.

The thing is that the Honduran public inherently knows that as it has kept an innate ability to discern fact from illusion. An average Honduran knows the government steals from him and tries to exploit him to one degree or another. The American public on other hand has been gradually deprived of that commonsense understanding over the last century or so. Most Americans live convinced that their government is a “great country” and that it and its many agencies: military, espionage, education “represents their interest.” That unfortunately is an illusion.

There are plenty of Honduran neighbors are noticing that. In March 2023, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated that “in Mexico there is more Democracy than in the US. Here people govern, there oligarchy governs.” He spoke of US military blowing up a Russian-German gas pipeline, with Germany being US’s NATO partner US should actually be protecting. He spoke of truth telling Journalist Julian Assange being viciously persecuted by the US government regardless if Obama, Trump or Biden is “in power.”

In November 2022, El Salvador’s president Bukele said: “America is being destroyed by design from within because it cannot be destroyed from the outside. There is no other logical explanation.” While a Mexican president, and El Salvadors president, can afford to a degree to speak truth to power, Honduran presidents have proven themselves more of peripheral agents of the New World Order and stay silent.

An average Honduran knows the government steals from him and tries to exploit him.

Honduras’ oligarchy is transient, fortunately. Neither of the Ricardo Maduro, Mel Zelaya, Roberto Micheletti, Pepe Lobo or JOH were able to establish an apparatus that was able to survive them. One week they can be Honduran presidents, the next they are arrested and sent to jail. While to some people this reflects that Honduras is sometimes run by criminals, to others it means that even the most powerful criminals in Honduras meet their justice. That unfortunately is not the case with the US justice system and the senior deep state managers.

The US presidents, secretaries of State and NIH chiefs for over the century have been managers of the American Empire for supranational entities. For that, they are given lifelong protection. The US’s legal system and political system protects its deep state “senior manger,” like Kissinger, Clinton(s) or Fauci.

Honduras is on the peripheries of the coming new order and remains relatively free for the average citizen. Freedom in Honduras lives in the wide cracks of the Honduran government’s incompetence, inefficiency and self-service. These cracks are wide enough that many people enjoy freedom of everyday life, raising a family, running a business.

Freedom in Honduras comes from the inefficiency of its media, education system and the government itself. The media in Honduras is relatively small. While they fall in line with most of globalist agendas, they are more similar to local news media in US counties that occasionally get away with telling the truth.

The US government is not run by the American people, nor does this government have the best interest of the American people in mind. The great part of the successful capture of the American mind came via the county’s controlled media and thanks to US’s debased educational system.

The sad reality is that after a decade long process, practically all US institutions, from CIA and Military to USPS have been captured by interests that are not those of the American people. Who captured them is up for contention. Some people call this the deep state, the military industrial complex, the Big Pharma, international banksters, ZOG, Black Rock or family cartels of the central banks. In fact, it could be any of them, or it could be a mixture of any of them colluding, using similar strategies, sharing same owners and striving for same goals.

The control of the US media has a 100 year history. Texas Congressman Callaway entered into congressional record about JP Morgan interests planning and buying out 25 of the US’s leading newspapers in order to take control of the opinion of US public. In March 1915 newspaper men were employed to analyzed 179 newspapers for the purpose of “controlling the general policy of the daily press” and eventually it was decided that only the most influential 25 newspapers needed to be purchased and with it their editors and editorial policy.

The control of the US media grew as the media expanded into radio and television. CIA’s Operation mockingbird began in 1950 and the CIA agency has placed it agents in every major US and some international news outlets. The CIA, a praetorian guard of the deep state, has evolved from controlling the media to being the media.

In XXI century yet another control mechanism has entered the sway as Blackrock and Vanguard control board of directors that won media companies. “Freedom is predicated on privacy. If you have no privacy, you have no freedom,” said Fox’s News Tucker Carlson about NSA intercepting his communication about interviewing Putin before 2022 Ukraine-Russia war escalation. “Democrats are in it like Republicans.”

Honduras is also freer than the US as far as its military is concerned. While indeed Honduras Military has found itself a puppet of the US Military in WWII declaring War on Germany in 1941 and sending troops to Iraq (2003-2004) in that fiasco. Still, the military misadventures of the Honduran Military, compared to the US, have been limited to an occasional internal coup. Every 20 years on average.

Freedom in Honduras comes from the inefficiency of its media, education system and the government itself.

The US on the other hand has become an unwilling party, engulfed in other nations quagmires at expense of blood and treasure of the average American citizen. These decisions have been made by the US not for its own sake but for the sake of another entity. US has become a vassal state waging endless and expensive wars from Libya to Syria to Iraq, allowing Israel to prosper while its enemies live in quagmires.

The 1998 policy report named “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” prepared for Benjamin Netanyahu by Richard Perle outlined an approach on how to solve Israel’s security problems in Middle East. What fallowed were the CIA and US military wars in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and coups that led to destabilization of Libya, Egypt and Sudan. Israel benefits while US pays and risks it all.

The only way US is perceived less corrupt than Honduras is that the US has managed to legalize corruption and call it another name. US have 13,000 such corruptors disguising as “lobbyists.” Each year these lobbyists spend four billion dollars “influencing government officials.” That influence translates to de facto control. While in Honduras bribery is defined as an effort to buy power, in US’s lobbying is defined as an effort to influence it. In fact is there is little distinction between the two.

Often the US lobbyists go back and forth between government service and jobs at corporations which leads to a gigantic and debasing conflict of interest. There are foreign governments corrupting US officials against the interest of US citizens. There are Chinese lobbyists, Israeli lobbyists, Big Pharma and Military lobbyists. In Honduras there are no such things as registered lobbyist and things are much clearer. You either bribe someone or you don’t.

Transparency International ranks 180 counties in an annual Corruption Perceptions Index. The US is ranked number 24, while Honduras is 157 and tying in with Burma. That is not the reality, that is only an illusion of reality.

Hurricane Eta Batters Mainland Honduras Leaving Disaster on Scale with Mitch

When the wind and rain subsided Roatanians swiftly reached out with help to their compatriots in need. Many groups including Little Friends Foundation, Seventh Day Adventist Church collected emergency items and shipped to the mainlanders in need. Bay Islands Petroleum offered free shipping of the aid to Puerto Cortes.

Roatanians swiftly reached out with help to their compatriots in need.

When Hurricane Eta, the 29th hurricane of the 2020 season, approached Misquito coast of Nicaragua its strength increased quickly from category one to category four or like some sources report five. On November 3 Eta made landfall near Nicaraguan town of Puerto Cabezas and begun affecting central Honduras dumping as much as three feet of rain, life-threatening amounts of water that filled up dams, rivers and flooded valleys.

Honduran government was not only unprepared for the disaster, its delayed calls for evacuating areas at risk of flooding causing confusion and loss of life. While Honduran government forbid Easter celebrations in April citing Covid-19 fears, it made every effort to encourage Hondurans to celebrate week of Francisco Morazan, of November 1-7 and to travel en masse around the country. As Hurricane Eta was already ravishing Nicaragua, at 8 pm on Monday, November 2, Honduran government called that the “vacations should be done responsibly.” At 10 pm on Monday November 2, Honduran government finally cancelled the Morazanic Week celebrations, but by that time the national disaster was already unfolding.

On Tuesday, November 3 Tela, Ceiba, Olanchito and southern portion of Sula Valley experienced floods. On Wednesday, November 4 water rushed into Sula Valley flooding over a hundred thousand homes. The levies around canal Maya in La Lima municipality gave way to water and thousands of people were trapped on roofs of their homes and on bridges. On Thursday, 5th, the Permanent Contingency Commission (COPECO) ordered a “mandatory evacuation of population living in flood areas of Ulua river.” This was too little, too late. While government currently reports 68 dead, many bodies have not yet been found.

Honduran government finally cancelled the Morazanic Week celebrations, but by that time the national disaster was already unfolding.

Almost every department in Honduras has been hit hard with Honduras’ staple coffee and banana crops damaged or destroyed. “Eighty percent of Copán Ruinas road network has been damaged, almost all of its agricultural production – corn, beans, and vegetable crops – was destroyed,” wrote Sandra Guerra of Copan Ruinas. “Coffee growers are also in danger of losing this year’s coffee crop.”

Honduran government estimates the economic loss for the country equivalent to $8 billion, or 33% of its GDP. 300,000 Honduran homes were flooded and over a million Hondurans had to evacuate their homes almost in every Honduran department.

As Lockdown is Extended Roatanians Witness National Police Abuses

While police punished individuals violating the unconstitutional lockdown laws with arrests, vehicle confiscation and fines, they decided that the law doesn’t apply to themselves or their families. This comes on the tail on an incident where Jaime Barahona, Bay Islands police chief, and 11 other police, came unannounced to Roatan from COVID-19 area and didn’t announce their arrival, or tested for the virus.

That type of behavior is more typical than most people like to believe and the Roatan police, now under leadership of Sub Commissioner Serrano Nieto are following the footsteps of their ex-national chief Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares, 60, known as “El Tigre.” Last week US prosecutors accused Bonilla Valladares of overseeing cocaine trafficking on behalf of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and his brother, a former congressman. “El Tigre” has a rank of a General in National Police and is also implicated in being part of death squads responsible for executing criminals and political opponents.

On Monday May 4, back at work, National Police fired tear gas at Rotanians protesting the inability of the national government to allow their loved ones to come back to the island from the mainland. “There are around 300 people stuck in La Ceiba waiting to get back to the island,” says Julio Galindo, Roatan’s ex-Mayor and owner of Anthony’s Key Resort. “Utila managed to bring 19 people back.” The Coxen Hole protests came as central government extended the lockdown until May 16 and tightened stay-at-home laws limiting food trips from once-per-week to once-every-two-weeks.

After staying isolated for 14 days and proving that there is no COVID-19 infections on the islands Roatanians were made to participate in a cruel spectacle of wearing masks, gloves, self-imprisonment in their homes while growing paranoid in wait for the arrival of invisible enemy. This was 40 days ago.

While time-and-time again Honduran government has proven itself unable to run the country’s power generation system and its land telephone system, much of the public is somehow convinced that the Honduran government is competent to make life or death decisions about COVID-19 or economic impact of the shutdown. That could be only described as a mass case of a Stockholm syndrome where a hostage begins to associate with the interest of his kidnapper.

Roatanians remain confused or in denial about who is actually running their lives.

            Honduras, with a population of 9 million, has an average daily death toll of 400 people, including around 10 murders. The media has been ignoring this reality; it has been broadcasting death-porn of 93 COVID-19 drama of the country wide lockdown.

While Roatanians remain confused or in denial about who is actually running their lives. With courts closed, and constitution suspended, it is the Central Government and their National Police decides what goes and what doesn’t. Local government can just ask, and plead, but has no power. “The government is now allowed to issue orders in direct violation of the constitution. Such as restrict your freedom to circulate and your freedom to congregate,” said Keena Haylock, Roatan based attorney.

The National Police are complicit in enforcing and overreaching a national law that has no legal standing in forbidding church service, imposing house arrest of millions of healthy and closing down most business.

However, as the war escalated, on the 1st of March 1917, America began taking the threat of underwater warfare seriously enough to purchase the Danish Virgin Islands for $25 million. This was to preempt a possible German purchase for the purpose of installing a naval base there.

The decision of British Honduras (Belize) to send 450 soldiers to fight in the war on the Allied side further increased tensions in the region. In response, a plan was conceived by the exiled Guatemalan General Isidoro Valdez and it proposed to Heinrich Von Eckhart, the senior German diplomat, the general spymaster serving in Mexico City.

The “Valdez Proposal,” as it came to be known, was to muster an army of 5,000 Germans in Mexico, provoke a coup d’état in Guatemala to oust its pro-American president, Manuel Estrada Cabrera. The plan included an invasion of Belize with an army of Honduran opposition liberals to establish a U-boat base. Once a pro-German government had been installed in Honduras as well as in its major ports, then tire Mosquito Coast could also be used for naval bases.

Upon learning of these plans, U.S. naval intelligence sent the esteemed Harvard-educated Mayanologist Sylvanus Morley to Belize on a United Fruit Company ship. He travelled on the pretext of conducting archaeological research in the area.

Working as a secret agent from his headquarters in the American legation compound in Tegucigalpa, he would spend the next 20 months putting together an espionage ring in Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras to spy on and compile blacklists of German-owned businesses and diplomats. Ironically, his agents in Honduras had to collect their monthly pay of $25 from the German-owned Banco de Honduras, the only bank in Tegucigalpa.

Honduras also closed all of Germany’s consulates.

Morley would also travel over 2,000 miles of Central American coastline, including the Bay Islands of Honduras, looking for clandestine U-boat sanctuaries.

During his time in Central America, Morley and his agents would send back over 10,000 pages of information and reports to naval intelligence. Morley would later be acknowledged as probably America’s most effective secret agent during the war. He would later excavate and largely catalog the objects in the great Mayan city of Chichén Itzá in the Yucatán, as well as make several exciting discoveries of other previously lost Mayan temples and pyramids. Morley has been put forward as a model for Steven Spielberg’s fictional movie hero Indiana Jones.

In May of 1917, reports that a Standard Fruit banana boat had been shelled and sunk by a German gunboat on the milk run between La Ceiba and New Orleans prompted Honduras’s pro-American president, Francisco Bertrand, to cut off diplomatic relations with Germany. Honduras also closed all of Germany’s consulates including those in Puerto Cortez, La Ceiba, and Trujillo, and expelled its German diplomats. Honduras was put under martial law, and people wishing to travel within the country’s borders had to do so using an internal passport.

Germany had indeed been using its consulates to coordinate espionage networks. Most of these German agents were corrupt and much more interested in lucrative smuggling activities with allied ships than in espionage or actual sabotage.

Honduras finally entered World War 1 on the side of the allies on July 18, 1918. It was the last nation in the world to declare war on Germany. The threat of U-boats to the banana companies was now over.

Os it even possible to see ugliness in Paradise? On Roatan, the answer seems to be a resounding yes. In Webster’s Dictionary, aesthetics is defined as “the branch of philosophy dealing with the beautiful, chiefly with respect to theories of its essential character, tests by which it may be judged, and its relation to the human mind.”

There is a danger in allowing ugliness into a place of beauty. If all we see around us in uninspiring or of a low quality, this is something we will likely also emulate and build. Mediocrity breeds mediocrity.

To our own detriment too often we mimic and emulate things that are wrong, ugly and destructive. Classic times beauty was replaced with temporary fads and gimmicks. Modern art, modern ballet, modern theater, violent and degrading music had been weaponized and then told to us that ugly is beautiful, and that beautiful is boring. Confusion and transvaluation is all around us. Some things that were previously deemed as valuable are now worthless and vice-versa.

As humans all have a natural tendency to mimic. We mimic behavior shown to us as examples to emulate in films, on billboards, in social media. We also mimic ways we build houses and structures. So, if we live amongst beautiful, inspiring buildings, this is what we build. If we live amongst uninspiring mediocrity, this is what we tend to build ourselves.

Fortunately, Roatan is not mainland Honduras, just yet. While we are all used to seeing mediocrity of undescriptive, uninspiring places on the mainland, it hurts to see it on such a mesmerizing, picturesque island. For example, there are now several places to change oil – squarish looking concrete bunkers on the main Roatan road near Politylly that have spectacular, breathtaking views worth a million dollars are now merely mundane sites that could have been better served for more interesting projects The contrast of this beauty and mundaneness is striking.

When a community decides it wants to be healthy, spacious and beautiful, it has a right to enforce that “within reason.” It is perhaps obligatory to do that. An unseemly building also lowers property values of its neighbors. It also lowers the ‘wow’ factor for tourists visiting Roatan. A beautiful island dotted with mediocre and ugly buildings is not an impression islanders would like to project. Well at least most of them.

If we live amongst uninspiring mediocrity, this is what we tend to build ourselves.

Self-enforcement of aesthetic standards is as flimsy as human frailty so they sometimes need a little nudge. Many Roatan gated communities have architectural review boards. Therefore, Homeowners Associations enforce building styles, construction materials, window types and even colors allowed to be used in development. All in an effort to keep the beauty of the development at a certain level and protect the investment of the entire community from the transgressions of a few.

While I do believe the marketplace is the ultimate arbiter for what will thrive and what will go extinct, I think government has a role to play here. Not every building is built inside a gated community with governing by laws.

While government officials are no authorities on aesthetics, one of their few justified functions is to protect our commonwealth: clean water, wild animals and keep us safe from pollution. While municipal and furthermore, the central governments fail at that miserably, they should still be able to enforce the minimum standard of aesthetics in buildings.

Of course, we are free to make mistakes as we wish. We can build flimsy, ugly structures and live in them at our own risk. Yet, “freedom is not the ability to do what you want to do, freedom is the ability to do what you should do according to God’s commandments and God’s rules,” said Dr. Stan Monteith. You could extend that into an area of aesthetics, art and architecture: “freedom is building structures that follow God’s commandments of honesty, beauty and are not offensive to thy good neighbor.”

The public environment is something that belongs to all of us, it is our common inheritance. An ugly permanent building should raise voices of criticism, we just accept what we see driving or walking by.
The values that are public are not only physical, material, but also aesthetical. We were passed an environment that was beautiful and healthy by our parents and grandparents and we owe it to our children to pass them surroundings that are at least just as full of inspiration, potential and beauty as we took over.

While recently people increasingly react to the unsightliness of buildings around them. If a taxi passenger throws a plastic bottle out the window, this immediately raises protests and action. Unfortunately, not so when someone builds unattractive, or just plain ugly building on a beautiful easily visible site, it hurts. It hurts our sense of order, harmony and calm. So, let’s improve the level of construction and improve the aesthetics of our community.

USCGC Eagle flies her flag at Port of Roatan.

Biggest Sailing Ship to Date Visits Roatan

On June 29, USCGC Eagle, a US coast guard school ship docked at Port of Roatan and flew her banner. For two days Eagle turned into a floating museum hosting hundreds of Roatanians touring it’s deck and receiving a lesson in vessel’s history.

On Roatan the Eagle’s crew and cadets got a break from their sailing routine and got to do a bit of diving, snorkeling, zip lining, and shopping. “This was actually Eagle’s first visit to Honduras and Roatan (…) I can scarcely believe that none of my predecessors would have visited. Their loss,” wrote Matt Meilstrup, Eagle’s Commanding Officer. “We also had very productive meetings with the Honduran armed forces and government, especially Navy and Merchant Marine.”

The 295’ training cutter is the only active sailing ship in US military service. She dates back seven generations of ships to 1792 when US coast guard used its first ship – ‘Revenue Cutter Eagle.’ The Eagle was originally christened Horst Wessel in Hamburg in 1936, after a Nazi hero, in the presence of Adolf Hitler. She trained German sailors until WWII broke out and in 1942 she was armed and patrolled Baltic Sea. After the defeat of Germany, Horst Wessel was won by the United States in a drawing of lots with the Soviet and British navies and given to the US Coast Guard. Since 1946 every single new US cadet undergoing officer training has begun his or her career by learning to traverse the seas the old way, by trimming sails and scrubbing the decks.

The Eagle has almost 10 kilometers of running rigging and 2,070 square meter of sail area. Her hull is made of 3” teak wood laid with 1” steel. For an octogenarian, the Eagle is in great shape and there are no plans to retire it.

The New London, Connecticut based Eagle goes out on voyages lasting up to two months. It performs a public relations duty for the US Coast Guard as it offers training to cadets and officer candidates. USCGC Eagle recently underwent renovations including repairs to portions of her hull, upgrades to the berthing areas, installation of a new radar, and inspection of her masts. “That work is expected to add an additional 15 years of service life though, if my past experience is any guide, that will be stretched much longer,” wrote Captain Meilstrup. “ The ship is in fantastic material condition.” On July 2 Eagle departed Roatan for Cartagena, Colombia, to Curacao and then onto Miami.

Six Cubans with their vessel on the reef in front of Fantasy Island. (photo by Gringo Divemaster)

My grandmother immigrated to the United states of America over 50 years ago, I have migrant aunts, uncles and siblings who are proud to call the US their home. When arriving at Ellis Island in 1900 vastly European emigrants had pass a physical exam, read 40 words in English, and were asked about their felony past, willingness to work and prove sufficient funds ($25) to be let in. So where should we stand on crossing borders and when does it become too much to send us your downtrodden? I understand, better than anyone, the arguments for both sides of the migrant crisis and who it affects.

It is hard for Hondurans to stop other Hondurans from crossing what amounts to a departmental line drawn in a water. It’s as if Florida suddenly decided too many Americans were retiring there and refused US citizens entry across the state line. Well, it’s a similar scenario for the islands and the mainland, but here’s the kicker – we are an island with limited natural resources and finite jobs. We don’t have enough water to supply the existing population and maintain necessary levels of hygiene. If you don’t believe that, ask someone from Los Fuertes, or Balfate how many times a week they receive water. The public hospital doesn’t have running water. The courthouse doesn’t have a 24-hour water supply. We very well could be courting an public health epidemic of biblical proportions.

Still, every day we get a new batch of prospectors arriving on the ferry and on airplanes from the mainland in search of a better life, or a job, or just less violence. I, as most local attorneys, am a transplant to this island. But, while some people come to contribute to their new home, other come with poor intentions, or are fleeing authorities back home.

we should exercise some control over who is allowed to come and who is allowed to stay

The issue of immigration and border control is complicated. While we cannot deny anyone the right to freely move around the country, we can definitely apply some restrictions. On such a small island we should exercise some control over who is allowed to come and who is allowed to stay.

I believe anyone visiting for touristic purposes should be allowed to come with zero restrictions. There is a lovely system in San Andres, Colombia, a small island 400 kilometers east of Nicaragua’s coast: Colombian people are allowed to visit as tourist provided they have a hotel or holiday package booked or as residents provided they have a job offer from a local business, or a are starting a business venture that does not currently exist on the island. In this example, Colombians restricts other Colombians from visiting their own territory. They want to preserve the island for future generations, not bleed it dry in just a couple of years. They don’t want to scare off the tourists with never ending arrivals of beggars, thieves and murderers.

On Roatan everyone without a warrant for their arrest, or that isn’t running from the law should be allowed to visit. If you are investing in the island, or have proof of employment you should be allowed to stay. I’ll let the courts sort out if that violates the constitution, or not. These are the same courts that decided the whole controversy over a second presidential term and its de-facto prohibition in the Honduran constitution.

Pitt’s father, Thomas “Diamond” Pitt, had worked for the East India Company in Calcutta and had come into the possession of an extremely valuable 410 carat diamond, “The Regent”. It weighed close to four ounces and made Pitt a hefty sum of £135,000. In 1732, using his inheritance from the diamond, William, then age 37, founded a wood cutting settlement on the Miskito Coast. His fortunes further improved, when he rescued a beautiful Spanish noblewoman from a shipwreck. They married and her connections to influential businessmen and politicians in Tegucigalpa allowed Pitt to start a lucrative smuggling business. The colony thrived on smuggling and on the export of hardwoods, turtle shell, plant medicines, sugar and sarsaparilla.

A census taken in 1769 showed the town to have 200 settlers of white or mixed origin, 600 black slaves and around 3,000 Mosquito Indians. The town was twice the size of the other two towns of importance on the coast, Trujillo and Puerto Caballos, and boasted two shipyards and 12 lumber mills. That year alone over 800,000 board feet of mahogany, 10,000 pounds of turtle shell, and 200,000 pounds of sarsaparilla were exported to London and New York. All of this illegal commerce came to the attention of King Charles of Spain who ordered the trespassers to be expelled.

The colony thrived on smuggling and on the export of hardwoods

On April 13,1781, Galvez, accompanied by 800 soldiers from Roatan and 600 from Trujillo sailed for Black River. The area was mostly abandoned as the British and their Miskito allies had left to assist a young captain, Horatio Nelson, in his disastrous mission to invade Nicaragua. The meager force of 20 soldiers manning the defenses of Fort Dalling fled into the jungle.

Galvez knew that the British would return, and waited for them. Upon hearing of the loss of Black River, the Governor of Jamaica sent a 500 man relief force of Jamaican Rangers. They joined up with members of the Roatan and Black River Volunteer Militia, led by Captains Richard Hoare and James Ferral of Roatan, and their Miskito mercenaries. A force of 1,300 men arrived back in Black River to find the Spanish forces depleted with 400 men dead to tropical disease, snake bites, and alligators. The Spanish were soon defeated in a rout, losing 120 men to Miskito sniper archers. The last 23 officers and 715 men surrendered giving up ships, 33 cannons, and three Royal Standards. The men were shipped back to Omoa, under oath not to take up arms again against the British, and the town returned to normal commerce.

In 1786, Britain and Spain signed the Convention of London where Britain relinquished its control over the Miskito Coast in exchange for rights to settle Belize. 2,650 British settlers left Black River for Belize and Jamaica. The town was formally handed over to the Spanish by William Pitt’s grandson, William Pitt Lawrie.

The town of Black River boasted some fine houses and hence the Spaniards renamed it Palacios (Palaces) and 240 settlers arrived from the Canary Islands to re-colonize the town. The Spanish forbade any trading with the Miskitos, and this, combined with the new colonists total lack of knowledge of agriculture, caused the town to fail completely.

The final nail in the coffin came on the dawn hours of September 3, 1800, when the Miskito general Perquin Tempest silently paddled down the river by canoe accompanied by 200 warriors. The Miskitos killed every Spaniard they could find and only 80 survivors managed to flee to Trujillo, leaving the community abandoned for the next century.