A Tegucigalpa Duo Entertains and Inspires

The couple’s move from Tegucigalpa to Roatan came suddenly in June 2025. “I had a small tragedy in Tegucigalpa. I lost everything I had,” Aguilar says. Rather than breaking them, the setback inspired the couple to make a dramatic change in their lives and move to Roatan. José García, the blind musician already performing on the island, suggested they come there.

The musicians began performing on the street in West End and gained other contracts. The couple also performs in front of Taquería Raúl in West End. For one hour, from 3 to 4 p.m., the duo plays at the Ramírez Store in Sandy Bay. They have their toddler son next to them. José García, another blind musician, joins the duo for two evenings a week at Blue Marlin. Their toddler son, Schneider, accompanies them. “With this, we sustain ourselves, thanks be to God,” Aguilar says.

They were taught music at the Pilar Salinas School for the Blind in Tegucigalpa. The school was founded in 1948. Pilar Salinas Padilla, who was born in 1924, later founded another school for the blind in Guatemala. In 1978, she founded the Artisanal Center for Industry and Rehabilitation for the Blind. That school prepares blind people for professions. Salinas died in 2005.

In Santa Lucía, outside Tegucigalpa, Michael and Daisy attended the Artisanal Center for Industry and Rehabilitation for the Blind. “It is there they taught us, or rather awakened our musical talent,” Aguilar says. The couple learned to play a variety of instruments.

in Tegucigalpa I lost everything I had.

They were taught by singing coach Mr. Visitación Salgado. The professor who teaches musical instruments is Oscar Orlando Disqua. “In Tegucigalpa, there are musical bands of blind people,” Aguilar said. “They perform at events on contract.”

The graduates of this school play in musical groups all over Tegucigalpa and Honduras. “In Tegucigalpa, they leave us tips, but it is less than here,” Aguilar says about playing in parks and other public spaces in the Honduran capital.

There are several blind people who support themselves by asking for money, but there are also those who are self-reliant, creative and inspire others, often those more fortunate than they are.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the quality evolved still and became more about clean air, clean water, and a nice reef. Starting in the 2010s and 20s, the economy and island population has exploded. There are hundreds of well-stocked stores, strangers, and foreign languages all around. All in all, however, life on the island is still fun, healthy, and exciting. There are several things that contribute to a quality of life on Roatan, and I list them below:

The Basics

Good, year-round climate is the reason why many foreigners come to move to or retire on Roatan. They escape the cold, wet winters of Maine, Minnesota, and Manitoba.

Roatan is blessed with good, clean air, far away from polluted urban centers. Island residents should feel blessed, as there are billions of people living in places filled with dirty, obscure, and toxic air. Except for a few weeks of Central American June grass burning season, the island’s air is clean.

The island’s water comes from a subterranean aquifer that while diminishing, still provides us with quality H2O. The drinking water companies like Sun Water and Ramirez pump the water and purify it through reverse osmosis filters. To the benefit of us all, they do not add fluoride or chlorine.

Culinary Delights

Honduras is also a serious quality food exporter, and this good food is quite affordable on Roatan. The supermarket shelves are filled with great Honduran, shade-grown coffee of various kinds – Honduran beans, seafood, and meats. Eldon’s Supermarket is the best-stocked supermarket in Honduras, if not Central America.

Over the last 20 years, the island exploded with quality and diverse restaurants. For example, in 2003, Atlantic Chinese restaurant in Los Fuertes was the only place on the island to serve oriental cuisine. When Atlantic closed its doors, there was nothing for several years. Now, there are three Chinese restaurants, four to five places that serve sushi, a Thai restaurant, and even an Indian restaurant.

Education

Private primary education on the island began in the 19th century with Royal Readers textbooks being taught to children in private homes. Private secondary education started with ESBIR in 1983, and continued with Roatan Alternative School in Sandy Bay in 2003. Now there are seven private schools: ESBIR, several Christian schools, and a Montessori. There are even two universities, and one of them, UTH, is finishing a campus in French Cay.

Island is still fun, healthy and exciting.

Fast Internet

In 2003, many customers still used telephone dial up for their internet needs. The island connectivity – along with the rest of the planet – has come a long way since then. There are now several companies competing for internet customers, and a fiber optic internet cable connected the island to the mainland and beyond in 2020. Internet speeds, reliability, and costs are now matching what is available in the USA or Canada.

Government Offices

In 1980, there were just a few government agencies on Roatan: customs officer, a port captain, and a police chief. Even in 2000s, if you needed something, you had to go to Tegucigalpa, or at least to La Ceiba to have it done. There is the immigration office and a tax office. In the 2020s, Roatan is booming, and a central government helping you to hand over your money.

Small Community, For Now

Life in cities or big towns can be hectic, stressful, and unsafe. The Greeks said life in a city of over 100,000 becomes unlivable and filled with crime.

Island life keeps one more connected to people that you see over and over again. People are friendly here. Your neighbors are ready to help in an emergency, and those emergencies do keep coming. Life in a big city, on the other hand, gives you a certain level of anonymity and insulation from people you don’t want to see. In a big enough city, you can cut someone off on the road, show him the finger, and expect to never to see them again. These type of actions have consequences on Roatan, so you see them rarely.

If you offend someone on the island, you are likely to see them the next day at a store, or stuck in traffic in Coxen Hole. You cannot count on anonymity on an island that is only 54 kilometers long and 4 kilometers wide. Actions have consequences here, and that is a chief reason that Roatanians behave nicely to each other still.

Nature Above and Below Water

Today, the island is still green and relatively undeveloped. Out of 20,000 acres of Roatan’s surface, about 75% is still undeveloped forest or grassland. That number, however, was 90% just 25 years ago, and it is no doubt the island’s urban centers and gated communities that are growing in leaps and bounds.

As a warning to those who care, there are examples of many other Caribbean islands which were once just as beautiful as Roatan. These islands have overdeveloped, their resources were exploited, their trees were cut down, and their landscape became a jungle of concrete. Roatan is not that way yet, and hopefully never will.

Energy of Ideas

Roatan attracts energetic, entrepreneurial people with ideas. Some individuals arrive with novel ideas like charter cities and Bitcoin. Others come here with classical ideas that have been around for millennia, but need to be periodically rediscovered. Those people are about hard work, healthy food, dependability, and appreciation for small, tight communities that support one another.

Roatan has plenty of the free stuff.

Healthcare

Foreign expats retired on Roatan in their 60s, and as their health gets worse, a few years or decades later and in their 70 and 80s, they move back to the USA. They are typically in need of specialized health care and ease of care. These days they are on their way out, and a few people are even talking of an assisted living home being built on the island.
There are now small and large private health clinics all over the island that make life for the elderly much easier. There are dozens of medical specialists living on the island, and their services cost a fraction of what they would in USA or Canada.

Ease of Travel

Maritime travel to and from the island has gotten easier, quicker, and more affordable. You can head off the island on a fast catamaran five times a day. A weekend gateway to Utila or Guanaja is super easy to arrange. Dream Ferries has done a run connecting Roatan with Puerto Cortés via Utila.

That ease of travel wasn’t always the case. Back in the 1970s and 80s, the only way to travel to Roatan was via a dory, or a rickety airplane from La Ceiba. Things have changed greatly, and the island is not only accessible, it is also a hub for hopping to nearby Utila and Guanaja. There are regular flights to El Salvador, Belize, Cayman Islands, and Guatemala. Once a second airport terminal opens, that should get better still.

That is the great advantage of living 20 minutes from an international airport, which Roatan has. The island is separated by two flights from thousands of places around the globe. Islanders are just one flight away from Miami, Dallas, or Houston, and after a change of terminals, you could be on your way to Timbuktu.

Music Scene

Roatan has been alive with the sounds of music since the Garifuna arrived here in 1797. Today, there are a couple dozen bands and musicians that play and perform all around the island. The island musical scale ranges from Garifuna dancers to Country and Western music, with Bobbie Rieman, Muddy, The Happy Boys, and Londoners, to name a few.

Value

In the end, it all comes down to the bang for the buck. In 2025, things on Roatan are still affordable, and land and many homes can be purchased for a reasonable price. While you might have to fork over a hefty $9 million for a three bedroom villa in Saint Barts, you can own a mansion for 5% of that, or $400,000, on Roatan’s east end.

As many of us tend to forget: the best things in life are free, and Roatan has plenty of the free stuff. So let us
appreciate and enjoy the things we have.

The 1970’s and 80’s with the growth of the commercial fishing industry, and more significantly the mid 1990’s with the beginning of the development boom, attracted waves of settlers from mainland Honduras to the islands. The second and third generation of these settlers (those born here) now own property and businesses and speak English. The Bay Islands settlements of Barrio Los Fuertes and Colonia Policarpo Galindo are where the voters are, and for the first time in History we have a Governor who was not born on Roatan and whose native language is Spanish.

For the first time, the majority of councilors on the city council are Hispanic, but they are Bay Islanders now and have the strongest voice in local government affairs. This, of course, is why the newer communities that are predominantly Spanish-speaking are developing at a quicker rate (roads paved, rural electrification, potable water); this disproportionate rate of development is compounded also by the indifference of the English descendants and the absence of social cohesion within predominantly Creole and English communities.

I have read quite extensively about the early English settlers on Roatan in particular, and the impression I get is that they were an extremely resourceful and resilient people, working hard at farming and trading and extremely God fearing. I get the distinct impression that they were very disciplined, respected authority, and were prudent about who they put in charge.

Their culture and habitat are rapidly disappearing.

In 1844, even prior to becoming a British Colony, Royal Naval officers visiting Roatan were surprised at how well land regulation among islanders was organized and how the islanders were respectful and considerate of each other. Statistics show us that the Bay Islands produced and exported to the United States 1.8 million bunches of plantains in 1855 and up to 3.6 million by 1859. By the turn of the century, 5% of the total national exports came from Bay Islands farms . And why did this come to an end? Much as most good things in the Bay Islands come undone, instigated by Tegucigalpa (ergo Central Government).

Lt. Colonel Juan Barahona (Tegucigalpa appointed Governor 1917-1919) put pressure on Bay islanders applying huge levies thereby forcing them to sell to the mainland for much less than what they were selling to the US for and eventually this, compounded by Hurricanes was the end of the era of Agricultural success of the Bay Islanders and the first successful attempt at Honduranizing the Bay Islands.

Bay Islanders need to wake up and realize that their culture and habitat are rapidly disappearing under their very noses, the environment is being stressed to the breaking point (we will soon be an eroded Haitian wasteland with no water resources) and the central government walking away with millions in tax revenue that we could use here for roads and waste to energy plants. Bay Islanders need to be inspired by those intrepid, brave, resourceful men and woman who came before them like Uwins Elwin, Joseph Cooper, the Haylocks and the Kirkconnells.

Independence is a pipe dream – it is unconstitutional and would not garner any international support. Let’s be realistic but autonomy is feasible and can be negotiated within the framework of Honduran and international law; but this requires leadership and the age old Islander ingredients of initiative, grit, and resourcefulness. The ZEDES debacle showed us that it was possible to work together towards a common end, Spanish and English Islanders alike. Bay islanders of all ethnicities need to take charge of their birthright once more and right the ship before it capsizes, we still have time.

After a Fire, Three Hospitals are being Built on the Island

Roatan has found itself in a health crisis. On April 19, around 9pm, Roatan Public Hospital in Coxen Hole burned down in a spectacular fire. The fire destroyed 95% of the 33 year old building except for a portion of the office annex.
No one was killed or gravely injured in the fire and 60 interned patients were transferred to two nearby private island hospitals. Wood Medical Center in Coxen Hole received most of the patients and the private Hospital Centro Medico Sampedrano (CEMESA) received another dozen. “All the emergencies were attended until May 10 [for] free,” said Dr. Jackie Wood, owner of the Wood Medical Center who also helped to build the original public hospital in 1991. “My heart was broken and I cried all night. You do not imagine what I feel to see all that work [turn to] ashes.”
The firemen concluded that faulty electric wiring was the reason for the fire. “A couple years back we had a fire in a maternity room for the same reason,” said Dr. Wood.
The spring of 2024 has been full of fires breaking out all over Roatan. There has been very little rain since the rainy season ended on the island in March. Dry as bone trees and cohunes became prone to catching fire and strong winds made things especially difficult to handle.

While the fire was a disaster, it also became an opportunity to quickly and efficiently upgrade the islands hospital facilities. While the public hospital building was gone there were plenty of doctors, underutilized private clinics, a network of community clinics, a semi finished hospital in Dixon Cove, and there was an 18,000 square foot Adventist center.

Instead of quickly finishing the new public hospital in Dixon Cove, the central government decided to build a “temporary” hospital in Coxen Hole. Instead of using facilities that are available, the government set up tents in hot weather at Julio Galindo stadium in Coxen Hole.

“My heart was broken and I cried all night.”

Another site in Loma Linda area of Coxen Hole was chosen by the central government as a site for an emergency, provisional 40 bed hospital and is estimated to cost 100-150 Million Lps. It has been planned to be finished in 90 days, but due to a complicated, heavily sloped site, that is unlikely to happen.

The Loma Linda hospital site is adorned with a huge poster “Xiomara Sí Cumple,” – “Xiomara does deliver.” In fact after the fire and presidential visit the island was dotted with “Xiomara Sí Cumple” signs. There is one such poster at the Roatan international airport, one in Dixon Cove, one in Loma Linda and one at Coxen Hole stadium. A kilometer away, while central government authorities were erecting those signs, Roatan Municipality completely demolished the burned out hospital and practically flattened the old hospital site.

All in all, the facility that was closest to being able to function as a temporary hospital was the Adventist center in French Harbour. Little Friends Foundation along with Roatan Municipality operated the COVID center at the Adventist center back in 2020. While the second story of the large building was used for consultations and beds, the first story is being readied to function as an emergency center for the emergency temporary hospital before the provisional hospital is finished and before the new hospital in Dixon Cove is completed.

Six weeks after the fire things are far for clear for many islanders in need of medical attention and confusion still persisted. “The ambulances take you from the street and don’t even know where to take you,” said Steven Guillen, president of Little Friends Foundation, a NGO that was in charge of building the Dixon Cove hospital facility. “If you are dying, you have to go to CEMESA.”

In May a woman in labor was asked for money from treatment at Woods Medical Center, she didn’t have the funds, so she was transferred to CEMESA designated as an emergency care center. The transport she was using broke down and she was transferred to another vehicle. By the time she arrived at CEMESA it was too late and she died.

That could have been avoided. The Adventist center was ready to operate two weeks after the hospital fire. The current construction work on the hospital is being paid by the Roatan Municipality and donations. There is a blood testing center for TB and HIV being built as well.

For the time being, nurses and doctors are allocated to several centers around the island. While Roatan Municipality is financially and technically capable of building, even equipping a public hospital, it does not feel capable of running the hospital with accredited and paid staff – that is a step too far.

The history of the 20,000 square foot Roatan Public hospital goes back to 1991. According to Dr. Jackie Wood, it cost the government $7 million to build. It could have been much more, but many good willed people helped it along. “Equipment was donated from the United Kingdom government (…) donations from Roatan people and private companies from Roatan and La Ceiba and the central government,” said Dr. Wood.

The island outgrew the medical facility within a couple decades, but the road to the new public hospital has had been fret with hopes, mistakes, delays, and wishful thinking.

In 2006, after 15 years of the Roatan Hospital serving the public, then Mayor Dale Jackson decided that it was time to build a new hospital. Land in Dixon Cove was purchased as “an emergency purchase.” Eighteen years later that emergency still hasn’t been resolved.

The one million dollar land cost paid was an extremely high cost for the municipality. It took the next administration of Mayor Julio Galindo to pay off the purchase completely. There was nothing done during the Mayor Dorn Ebanks tenure.

While the fire was a disaster, it also became an opportunity.

When Jerry Hynds became mayor in 2018, he was able to secure a $2 million donation from Kelcy Warren, US billionaire and owner of RECO, for the construction of the hospital in Dixon Cove. “When the funds ran out the Municipality started using some of their own funds to complete the gray work. “The original discussions were that the Municipality would do the gray work and they would finish the hospital,” says Guillen. Windows, doors, some of the sewage and water infrastructure was also finished. Roatan municipality spent $500,000 and within a couple of years there was a large, 75,000 square foot two story building sitting on a hill in Dixon Cove.

In Honduras many things are accomplished when local and central government belong to the same political party, that was not the case with National Party in Tegus and Liberal party on Roatan. “ [Mayor] Jerry [Hynds] said: ‘If they [central government] are not going to join, we are going to finish it,” said Guillen. “He had it in his mind that he was going to finish it one way or another.”

In fact the construction of the new public hospital was a joint effort and not only Kelcy Warren’s donation and municipal tax dollars funded it. “May people donated freight, equipment time and helped to reduce costs,” said Guillen. While these donations were not enumerated by Little Friends Foundation, they likely run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In 2022 the 75,000 square foot Dixon Cove hospital building has been finished in raw state with windows and doors placed. The building sits on 8.3 acres site and there is a basement. Electric, sewer and gas lines could be installed as per requirement.

“There were verbal agreements, but never any written agreements with any administration,” said Guillen. Several visits by central government contracted engineers and architects took place. Recommendations were made, fulfilled, but nothing was put on paper and signed. “Every time the central government sent a crew of engineers they came up with a list of changes. Moving and creating walls, doors,” said Guillen.

The reality was that Roatan’s politicians were working with best intentions in a constantly evolving political climate back in Tegucigalpa. “The idea was to pass the facility into the hands of the Honduran health ministry in a raw state, and for them to finish it up to their standards,” said Guillen. According to Guillen the land title has been transferred to the national government years ago.

After Ximara Castro’s Libre Party won the national elections in November 2021 the relationship between Roatan Municipality and José Manuel Matheu, Honduran Health Minister under President Xiomara Castro, was going well. “We had a very good relationship with him. He brought in IDB [International Development Bank],” said Guillen. That all ended when in December 2023 Matheu was replaced with Carlos Aguilar. Since nothing was written down and agreed, Municipality was left holding the bag.

After the public hospital burned down a political turf war for credit as far as who is building what with whom’s money on Roatan intensified. It seems that Honduran president’s Libre Party was not willing to give credit to local authorities who are affiliated with the Liberal Party.

Then there was the bigger issue. If the new Roatan hospital was to be finishing with locally done contractors and donated equipment there would no way for big players to make money and make themselves seem indispensable. If local authorities would solve their own infrastructure and health problems, like Roatan has attempted, there would be no need for dependency on international loan institutions. That would mean 2000 bankers and bureaucrats in IDB Washington DC headquarters would lose their salaries, and that cannot be.

According to Honduran authorities $47 million dollars is now needed to finish the new hospital and equip it. The around $2.5 million spent on the building by Warren and Municipality is a rounding error of the estimated remaining costs. Now plenty of companies will have an opportunity to skim off the very high top and make money in the bonanza.

Roatan Municipality is financially and technically capable of building, even equipping a public hospital.

Local authorities say, that the building could be finished and equipped and ready to open for a fraction of that sum. “We could get all the equipment in very good condition donated,” said Guillen.

That is unlikely to happen. Since 2010 IDB has allocated 35% of its annual loan approval to “small and vulnerable” members and Honduras is qualified as one of them. IDB constantly needs new projects to allocate millions, and tens of millions of loans. Finding donors for a new public hospital is good business for IDB and good for its bottom line.

For average islanders worried about their health, the money, the funding and technical matters are too complicated to contemplate. Yet, the fact is there is money to be made loaning out money. There is plenty of money to be made in the construction of a new hospital and plenty of entities are eyeing the Roatan project.

It is the central government that decides what the municipalities need, often with a faulty understanding of population dynamics and local idiosyncrasies. This is how Roatan Island ended up with a Coxen Hole desalination plant and José Santos Guardiola with a garbage dump in Punta Blanca that never opened. These white elephants were paid from loans and grants by IDF and Inter American Development Bank. These projects are expensive and justify the existence of large international lending institutions.

The sad part is not only about the debt that is unnecessarily created, it is also that Honduras does need government investment in other parts of the country and is not getting it. One such example is the rebuilding of Canal Maya (In the Sula Valley, Mainland Honduras) that was destroyed in the 2020 Hurricane season, yet there are no funds and no one to rebuild it.

Other than IDB, another winner in this situation and all this chaos could be CEMESA. They have secured an agreement with government for treatment of patients. What is not known is how much CEMESA charges the government for these services. CEMESA prices are high, an appendix surgery can cost Lps.50,000 or more.

After the fire, a fund was set up out of which CEMESA is paid by Ministry of Health and Ministry of Finances. “CEMESA don’t have 11 million Lps. This in an insurance fund,” said Doctor Lastenia Cruz, Roatan Hospital Director, on May 29. “We are in front of CEMESA, we are meeting them constantly.”

There is a great contrast with how government and private business deal with a fire, and efficient restructuring. For example Waldina’s Tapestry shop, a private business that burned to the ground in French Harbour in February 29, 2024. With very few resources, but with much motivation, the owner was able to rebuild and reopen her upholstery and sail repair business within weeks of the fire. A great contrast to the paralysis and confusion of the central government after the Roatan hospital fire.

At the end of June there was no agreement what to call the French Harbour Adventist hospital facility. Some islanders still call it the Adventist Center, some call it Adventist Hospital, and some still call it the COVID Center.

Still the Adventist Center has been receiving plenty of non emergency patients. On May 27, Aldin Ebanks, a patient from Coxen Hole, went to Wood Clinic in Coxen Hole where he was told to go CEMESA. At CEMESA he was told to go to the Adventist center. All this took time, money, and transport expense. He was diagnosed with water in his lungs, and treated at the Adventist Center.

Roatan’s politicians were working with best intentions in a constantly evolving political climate.

The Adventist center is now open 24 hours a day and the number of specialists working at the Adventist center has been gradually increasing. “The Adventist center opening will cover all the services required by the population,” said Guillen. “They have greater capacity than the original public hospital.”

There is a plan to use both the downstairs and upstairs of the Adventist Center. The Municipal is making plans to turn the two story building into a fully functional hospital. The facility is actually larger than the original public hospital in Coxen Hole.“We are trying to centralize everything here,” said Guillen.

While the Adventist organization is letting the Honduran ministry of health use the facility without a written contract. Again, this could lead to misunderstandings and conflicts. Who pays for electricity costs, for maintenance costs, or for damages is not 100% clear. “They [central government] should work with the Municipality to set up this [Adventist Center],” said Guillen. “We don’t know how long they will be on temporary basis.”

Some consultation services were decentralized from the public hospital to community clinics outside of big towns. The recently opened clinic in Flowers Bay is picking up plenty of work.

The island’s medical situation will clear itself out in a matter of a year, or two. There is one question that remains and that is whether perhaps the central government and some international organizations, despite what they say and want you to believe, are not there to help you in the most sensible and efficient way, but to exploit your problems to the advantage on interest groups.

Many of us agree to pretend that police, health, education and emigration services are here to help. We are afraid to admit how inefficient, malevolent and expensive these government entities are. The cost of realizing that would be we would have to do something about it. It is easier just to go on pretending.

$47 million dollars is now needed to finish the new hospital.

She married Hamilton James and they had a son together named Robert. Mrs. Clara is the mother of two other children, Candia and Liliana.

She was a very social person, and travelled to many places around Bay Islands and all over Honduras. She was a housekeeper and a cook in many places on the mainland –San Pedro, Tegucigalpa, and La Ceiba.– “I worked like a man,” says Mrs. Clara. “I worked hard.”

She used to farm vegetables late into her life. The numbness in her fingers prevented her from continuing to do so.

Since the mid 1980s Mrs. Clara has lived in the home of her daughter Candia, in a concrete, blue hose perched on a hill in Diamond Rock. Her home is just west of the Czech development in Diamond Rock looking at Roatan’s highest hill, Mount Picacho.

I worked hard.

Funeral Businesses on Roatan are Looking at a Bright Future

For a-century-and-a-half, Roatan’s caskets were made to order by local carpenters. Even today some people still choose to have a carpenter make their casket.

In 2023 there are three places to purchase your caskets on Roatan. The first one opened by Samuel Alexander Ebanks, 79 and his wife Patricia Elaine Bennett, 78, on the main street of Coxen Hole. Their forty-year-old business, Islander’s Funeral Home, is the oldest such one in the Bay Islands.

Mr. Samuel remembers a voice speaking to him: “When you stay home you got to sell caskets”

When he retired from his sea fearing career, Mr. Samuel remembers a voice speaking to him: “When you stay home you got to sell caskets.” It was 1983 and Roatan had no casket stores. When someone died a carpenter would have to make a simple casket right there and then. The island custom until them was that men would build the casket at night during the wake and bury the deceased the next day.

He had an employee making caskets, another man painting the caskets and then another man would fix the inside. If the family wished a viewing glass, it was installed on the top of the casket.

Eventually Mr. Sam began buying caskets in San Pedro, in Copán, in Tegucigalpa, in Olanchito and in La Ceiba. Islanders from Utila and even Guanaja would travel to their funeral home to purchase a casket for their deceased family member.

In 1980s and 1990s mahogany was still inexpensive and majority of caskets then were made on the island used this hardwood as the main material. “The first casket I made was a mahogany casket,” remembers Mr. Samuel.

Samuel remembers the best cabinet maker he ever had. Edmundo Ponce was from the coast, and he could make the finest casket even if all he had was scrap wood. He once made a Copa de France design casket using throw away pieces of wood. “The foot is round, and the head is round,” says Mr. Patrick. “DV Woods bought that casket for his daddy.”

Not every deceased is shaped the same and Mr. Patrick has to be ready to make caskets for smaller and bigger deceased. “Sometime I have to make a big casket.… I had to buy one inch plywood and had to make 36 inch wide casket. She was big,” remembering one such client Mr. Patrick says “It took 10 men to put her in that house.”

His caskets range from Lps. 25,000 to Lps. 35,000, but he has some economical models for Lps. 12,000. While on a typical month his funeral home would sell one, or two caskets, they sold 15 caskets in one month. “When the Covid 19 came to the island, it was the most we sell,” says Mr. Patrick. He has a network of casket makers.

In 2012 a second Roatan based funeral home opened its doors just 200 meters down the road from Islander’s Funeral Home. Divino Paraíso is one of 12 funeral homes opened in Honduras by Salvador Laro from La Ceiba. Laro opened his first store in 2009 and the Roatan operation in La Punta in Coxen Hole begun two years later.

The funeral home serves the entire spectrum of caskets, from Lps. 8,000 to Lps. 38,000. The Wood composite caskets are the most economical option, while the painted and varnished wood caskets at Lps. 38,000 are the ultimate luxury.

Osiris Zambrano and her husband Ronald Rojas have been managing Divino Paraíso for 11 years. They are the biggest vendor of caskets on Roatan and typically have about twenty caskets on hand.

According to Zambrano there was a spike of caskets purchases in 2020 when the funeral home was selling 15-20 caskets a month. Now they are back to pre 2020 levels with sales of two to three caskets a month.

Funeral traditions on the island are different then of those on the mainland.

One reason allowing the funeral home to grow is funebre, a contractual payment option where clients are contacted to begin paying off their caskets in monthly installments. “It is an option for the most humble families,” says Zambrano. These monthly payment vary from Lps. 300 up to Lps. 2,000 and the family has up to eight months to pay off the casket after the death of the client.

Mrs. Zambrano says that the island’s security companies are one of the Divino Paraíso’s best clients. “They pay up front in any of their employees dies,” says Zambrano.

The funeral home can move the body in a vehicle and have 25 chairs, casket stretcher, candelabras, altar that can be used during funeral services.

The funeral home also offers Embalming services. The Embalming is an option taken by all, but the most modest of their clients. The embalming costs Lps. 2,000 and Lps. 4,000. The service is more expensive if the person was overweight or if there was disfigurement at time of the death as with “people who died in motorcycle accidents,” for example.

The funeral traditions on the island are different then of those on the mainland. “I don’t think the islanders would want a funeral room like the store has in La Ceiba,” says Zambrano. “There are hundreds of people that show to funerals here, and there just wouldn’t be enough space.”

The funeral home works with importing of human remains to the island form abroad. The remains are typically flown in to San Pedro Sula and then transported by road to La Ceiba and to the island via Galaxy Ferry.

Cemetery burial is one of several options for the deceased on the island. Jardines del Recuerdo in San Pedro Sula offers cremation services in Honduras. According to Zambrano this option is typically taken by foreigners. Burial at sea, usually three miles out to sea, is sometimes an option taken by foreigners with few economic means.

The Colonias in Sandy Bay are a vibrant microcosm of emigrants from all over mainland Honduras. The beauty right outside of his door is full of color, noise and vibrancy. It is the place for many mainlanders to start their lives in the island department. Sandy Bay colonias are a Honduran melting pot where Olanchanos, Misquitos and Capitalinos build their “Roatan dream.”

Elmer is painting using acrylics on small rectangular, dark canvas. The image Elmer paints is of an old man wearing a white hat walking amongst coffee plants in the mountains of mainland Honduras. Elmer had used the Google search engine to locate this image and bring it to canvas and back into a non-digital existence.

“I like paining old faces,” says Elmer. “In old faces you can see their work, toil, happiness and sadness.” While he paints a face of an image he downloaded from google, the world outside his door is full of life, struggle, work, joy.

Elmer Alexander Madariaga Sánchez, 36, signs his work with a four letter acronym: EAMS. He was born in Department of El Paraíso to a family of farmers. His parents moved to Tegucigalpa for economic reasons. Elmer was painting from the time he was nine-years-old.

“I married at an early age. I had children,” says Elmer who decided to interrupt his art studies at UNAH after barely starting. From that point forward his life became centered and focused on supporting his growing family. He completed several courses in fine arts and began working making jewelry in Tegucigalpa.

His life became centered and focused on supporting his growing family.

In 2010 his life took a turn. He moved to Roatan to work at a Diamonds International store as a jeweler. In fact, he still works as a jeweler in the mornings and paints in the afternoons.

He is still growing as a painter. He is working out his style and exploring many painting techniques. He can paint impressionist, surrealist, realist, landscape, and portrait paintings. He likes to paint in acrylic, pastels on canvas, and oil. On the weekends he paints murals and does interior design.

For the longest 20 kilometers run, nine people registered, all of them islanders. The top finisher comes in at 2 hours and 20 minutes. Sixteen locals participated in the 10 kilometer event. In the 5k run 70 people participated and in the 2k run 60 children signed up.

Logistics and organization of the running trails were organized and set up by the Cacique Trail Runners. Cacique organizes cross country races in four places around Honduras: in Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, Choluteca, La Ceiba, and Roatan. Out of these the Tierra Extrema race in Tegucigalpa – Ojojona is the most extreme, and most difficult of the races organized in Honduras.

The running course took the runners into Marbella, Colonia Smith, Crawfish Rock and finished in Palmetto Bay housing community.

Giselle Brady and BICA were organizers of the event. The logistics of the race and the setup of the running course were done by the Cacique trail runners. Forty volunteers, most of them, Roatan High School and BICA volunteers, helped with the event. Cacique Trail Runners are considering Port Royal Park for the 2023 race venue.

Honduras’ religious intellectual is Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, AKA ‘vice Pope,’ he was born in Tegucigalpa in 1942. At 19 he joined the Salesians and went on to receive three doctorates. The first one was in philosophy at the “Don Rua” institute in El Salvador, then a doctorate in Theology from the Salesian Pontifical Institute in Rome and Lastly, yet another doctoral title in Moral Theology from Pontifical Lateran University. A bit oddly he also received a diploma in clinical psychology and psychotherapy and has become a professor of moral theology and ecclesiology at the Salesian Theological Institute.

In one of his more significant statements Cardinal Maradiaga pressed for debt forgiveness by financial controllers such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. His eminence Maradiaga doesn’t shy away from controversy, he states that politicians that publicly support abortion excommunicate themselves. Yet another one of his more quoted statements is: “to divert attention from the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, Jews influenced the media to exploit the current controversy regarding sexual abuse by Catholic priests.”

Cardinals to Pope Francis, has also a dark side and was forced to flee a mob at Toncontín International Airport. The Honduran Cardinal has been accused of corruption. The Vatican launched an inquiry into allegations of financial misconduct against Maradiaga, including large sums received from the Honduran government through a Church-controlled agency. In other words, Maradiaga is no stranger to controversy. Like him or not, he is the leading intellectual Honduran voice of the current times.

Independent artists and thinkers shape Honduras’s soul.

Not many Honduran musicians could be called intellectuals, but one exception was Guillermo Anderson who performed dozens of times on Roatan. Guillermo Anderson was in many ways the national musician of Honduras and the voice of the country’s soul.

He composed the lyrics of his songs about ecology, landscape, social ills and Honduran idiosyncrasies. Guillermo Anderson, 1962-2018, was perhaps the most widely known Honduran singer and musician. His musical group played Garifuna percussion and emulated the sounds of Honduras’ Caribbean coast. He combined reggae with salsa and Garifuna Punta and parranda music.

His song “En Mi País” for example, became practically a second national anthem in Honduras. “En mi país rumor de mar, selva y quebrada. Están el sabor de la naranja y la guayaba. Está el color de la flor que no marchita. Está el olor a café en la tardecita,” Anderson nostalgically sang.

Honduras is home to Copan, the ‘Athens’ of Mayan Civilization, and home to Honduras’ premiere archeologist Ricardo Agurcia Fasquelle. This renowned archeologist was born in 1952, in Tegucigalpa, hailing to decadence to French ancestry.
Agurcia graduated from Duke University and received his MA from Tulane University. In 1989 he discovered the fascinating Rosalila Temple in Copán. Agurcia’s research focuses on the founder of the dynasty YaxK’uk Mo’ and the uniquely preserved Rosalila Temple, has a cave and a symbolic passageway to the world of the dead. He specializes in the temple number 16 associated with K’inichYaxK’uk’ Mo.’

Rosalila Temple sits in the middle of a long sequence of constructions built over 400 years by the ancient Maya. It is built in the year 571 AD by Moon Jaguar, the 10th ruler of Copán. Just like all the other buildings in the central axis of the Copán Acropolis, it is dedicated to the memory of the founder of the dynasty, K’InichYaxK’uk Mo’.

Agurcia is also the director of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History. He developed a hypothesis that the wood used in the construction on the temples caused a major deforestation of the area. With Virginia M. Fields and Dorie Reents-Budet he authored “Lords of Creation: The Origins of Sacred Maya Kingship.”

Honduras is full of stories; stories that defy belief, stories that hold the key to understanding history and geopolitics of the western hemisphere. Fortunately there are several writers that write down these stories. Writer Julio Escoto was born in San Pedro Sula in 1944. He studied at a Teaching University in Tegucigalpa and at the University of Florida and in 1976 he moved to Costa Rica where he founded CSUCA (Asuntos Culturales del Consejo Superior Universitario Centroamericano).

Escoto received an MA degree in Spanish American Literature at the University of Costa Rica, and in 1986 he returned to Honduras to take the position of the literature professor at the UNAH. He was an editor of a literary journal “Imaginación.” He writes a column for El Heraldo and is the director of the National University of Honduras.

Escoto is a Honduran short-story teller, a novelist and an essayist. His notable novels include El árbol de los pañuelos, Días de Ventisca, Noches de Huracán, El General Morazán marcha a batallar desde la Muerte, and Rey del Albor.

Honduras is full of stories; stories that defy belief.

Poetry gives us an insight into a human soul and poets give us a glance at what is the Honduras soul. Poet Roberto Sosa, born in Yoro in 1930, was considered the greatest living poet in Honduras. While it is Nicaragua that is the cradle of Central American poetry, Sosa has brought a Honduran voice to the top of poets of the region.

His poems were translated into several foreign languages and he was awarded the Adonais Prize in Spain, and Casa de las Americas Prize in Cuba, and the prestigious Order of the Arts and Letter in France. Sosa was an editor of Presente Magazine and was president of the Honduras Journalists’ Union.
He also taught literature at the UNAH.

His poems: The Common Grief and The Return of the River were some of his most known. “Nothing flickers now but pain… In this instant that is already eternity… And a day,” eloquently wrote Sosa in The Common Grief. While he passed away in 2011, his presence is still felt.

Thirty Forgotten Roatanians Sneak Back Home

A boat with around 30 people arrived in Jonesville at 3AM on May 16. Their desperate trip was preempted by two months of pleadings, petitions and protests addressed to central and municipal governments of Roatan. All their pleas were answered with empty promises and tear gas.

According to Bay Islands Governor Dino Silvestri nine people presented themselves to authorities upon arrival, another seven were arrested ad put under quarantine and fourteen others have not been yet located some of them in Santa Helena. According to Governor Silvestri, the radar system installed on the west of the island didn’t pick the boat’s signal.

 “It’s been over two months and not even the plan [for returning of stranded on the mainland islanders] has been created, people can only have much patience, and now they are out of it, angry, desperate and broke,” wrote Haydee Muñoz, a Roatan resident.

Tegucigalpa technocrats locked out 20,000 Santos Guardiolans without giving them access to medicine, to supermarkets, banks or gas. 

Since March 16, Roatan alongside other 17 Honduran Departments have been pressed into fit-all heavy handed policy of shutting down people in their homes and hoping for the best. “All constitutional rights have been suspended,” said Governor Dino Silvestri.

On May 16, officials at the Central Government’s – National Risk Management System [Sistema Nacional de Gestión de Riesgos – SINAGER] have decided to cut of municipality of Santos Guardiola for 14 days from the rest of the world. “If the results come out positive, the department will go into absolute curfew,” the unsigned SINAGER document threatened Utilians, Guanajans and Roatanians.

Tegucigalpa technocrats locked out 20,000 Santos Guardiolans without giving them access to medicine, to supermarkets, banks or gas stations. The immune from legal action technocrats were deciding about people’s lives from their offices in Tegucigalpa.

The next day protesters gathered at the border between the two Roatan Municipalities. After several hours they forced down the blockade of the National Police that attempted to keep residents of Santos Guardiola from crossing into Roatan Municipality.

The past 63 days of “Red Alert” shutting down did not allow the islanders or the Central Government to create COVID-19 treatment infrastructure. The island has no COVID-19 testing labs, no ventilators and trained staff to manage the ventilators.

Governor Silvestri announced that $25,000 from the COVID-19 emergency fund will be given to a committee that is coordinating the return of Roatanians home from the mainland. While Utila managed to bring back 19 of its people, around 250 people are still waiting to come back to Roatan in La Ceiba.