A Lady with a Smile Reflects on the Past

Mrs. Catherine Delilah Dilbert Tatum was born on the Hill in Diamond Hill on May 26, 1926. She was the seventh and final child of her mother, Belkis Tatum, from Diamond Rock. Her father, Nicodimus Dilbert, a farmer, was born in the Cayman Islands in 1882 and sailed to Roatan with his parents when he was just three years old.

When her mother passed away from pneumonia in 1933, seven-year-old Mrs. Catherine, along with two other young siblings, had to go live with relatives. She moved to West End to live with her mother’s relatives.

A neighbor, a young boy named John Jay Wood, taught young Catherine the alphabet and how to read and write. Less than ten years later, Mr. John Jay would marry Mrs. Catherine. She received three years of primary education from Victor Stanley, who taught children at the Auntie Blanch Hill Schoolhouse.

Life was simple but filled with work and sadness for young Catherine, as she saw very little of her father and siblings. To earn her keep, she had to grate 50 coconuts a day, working alongside others. Once everyone else was in bed, she would unroll her plantain trash mattress and sleep in the corridor of the small house. These simple mattresses were used throughout the island and made from recycled burlap sacks filled with soft and dry plantain leaves.

In 1941, the family that took her in purchased a store in Coxen Hole, and young Catherine followed them to work there. However, her mind was already elsewhere. In 1943, at the age of seventeen, Mrs. Catherine eloped. She traveled on a night boat to La Ceiba and married her 24-year-old neighbor, Mr. John Jay Wood, who had just finished working at the United Fruit Company in La Lima, Cortés.

Mrs. Catherine offered her help whenever she could.

The couple returned to Coxen Hole and took on the responsibility of managing the Litrico Store. Mrs. Catherine’s young husband managed the store, and every few weeks, he embarked on a round-the-island three-to-four-day journey to buy coconuts and plantains from farmers, some as far as Saint Helene. Litrico owned boats named Melly, Blanquita, and Seven Sisters, which were used to transport the produce from Roatan to Tampa.

The young couple rented a house a few hundred meters west of the store in Goat Hill, Coxen Hole. They were blessed with three children: Mary Lynn, John Wilmer, and Dainie Marie.

The municipal clock tower served as a reminder of the passing time, chiming every quarter of an hour. Sam Webster, the clock keeper, diligently oiled and wound the clock every few days. However, due to his occasional indulgence in alcohol, the clock would sometimes be neglected and stop.

In 1961, the couple acquired the Litrico store located across from Juan Brooks school, and they expanded its offerings. At Catherine D General Store, one could purchase not only foodstuffs but also gasoline, building supplies, and more. Mrs. Catherine also offered a unique service, capturing people’s photographs with her Polaroid camera.

There were five Coxen Hole stores that carried food staples, but only one was a general store. In 1950, the streets of Coxen Hole boasted five stores: the Catherine D Store, Warren Grocery, Litrico Grocery, Pollard James Store, and Maud Wilmuth Store.

Mrs. Catherine offered her help whenever she could, expecting nothing in return. Sometimes, it was during a medical emergency when Doc Polo was off the island; other times, it was when someone passed away, and the family had little money for funeral arrangements. In the 1950s, a young boy named Jack “Seven” McField suffered extensive burns from an explosion on a boat. Mrs. Catherine cared for his burns, applying burned motor oil with a chicken feather, and remarkably, the wounds healed well.

After her husband passed away in 2000, Mrs. Catherine carried on with running the store until 2006. “For some reason, I am still here,” she reflects in her soft, quiet voice. Since 2006, she has resided with her daughter, Dainie, and her son-in-law, Bill, in a property next door to where she lived back in 1933.

Today, she sits on a porch, gazing at the bustling and busy streets of West End, just across from Sundowners Bar. Her connection with West End dates all the way back to 1933.

Americans considered their bananas as a much more important commodity. In early 1942 Germany began targeting banana boats leaving Honduran and other Central American waters, in an attempt to undermine morale. The unarmed ships of the banana companies experienced serious losses.

In the United States, however, bananas were deemed to be of paramount necessity, not only for the general morale of the population, but also for the banana’s nutritional value to the nation’s diet.

Thus, banana exports from Honduras remained steady during the war. United Fruit’s catchphrase during the period became “Every banana a guest, every passenger a pest!” It was signaling that no space would be reserved for anything but the valued fruit.

Bananas were Deemed to be of Paramount Necessity

In February of 1942 United Fruit lost the SS San Gil. That loss was followed by the SS Esparta in March. Between April and July, is the period that the German U-boat captains called “The Happy Time,” 16 more United Fruit ships, averaging 4,000 tons each, were sunk. All in allover 150 Honduran crewmen lost their lives. During the war, over 80 banana boats from Central America would be sunk.

Standard Fruit had purchased four destroyers left over from WWI from the US Navy and converted them into merchant vessels designated to transport bananas. At the start of WWII, these were leased back to the Navy, and sent as cargo boats, to help break the siege of Corregidor in the Philippines but arrived too late.

In response to the alarming loss of merchant shipping, the U.S. Navy began to build anti-sub bases across the Caribbean. In November 1942 Puerto Castilla was chosen as the base for three Catalina long-range flying patrol boats. These amphibian planes would patrol the Bay Islands on a daily basis.

In its three years of existence, the base would pump over $400,000, in 2020 value, of much-needed money into the local economy. Unfortunately, the naval bombers chose for its bombing practice the mile-long island of San Vicente, lying off Santa Fe. That island was sacred to the Garifuna people.

By the end of the war the landscape of the island, now known as Cayo Blanco, had been completely destroyed.

The German operations in the Caribbean suffered a heavy blow when on Bastille Day, July 14, 1943; the Free French forces liberated the island of Martinique. The Axis submarines lost their base of operations. From then until the war’s end, only two more banana boats would be sunk.

The primary targets for German navy were oil and petroleum routes from Trinidad, Venezuela and the Dutch islands. Almost as important were the cargo vessels hauling bauxite from Jamaica and the Guyanas to be used in the manufacture of aluminum. Thus the battle of the Caribbean began. After the fall of France in 1940, Germany and Italy based most of their submarine fleet on the island of Martinique. Not wishing to provoke the United States into entering the war, the Axis left the American banana boats alone.

Using the Honduran ports of Puerto Castilla and La Ceiba as supply dumps, Nazi agents began bribing workers from United Fruit and Standard Fruit, into providing the Germans with bootleg diesel siphoned from tractors, field generators, and other equipment. Germans were keen on supplying their mariners with fruit, liquor, beer, water, and other contraband merchandise. These would be surreptitiously loaded onto barges which would rendezvous with the U-boats in between the mainland and the Bay Islands.

Germany and Italy based most
of their submarine fleet

on the island of Martinique.

This illicit commerce ended when US entered the war in December 1941, declaring war on Japan on December 11 Germany and Italy declared war on the US in response. Honduras followed suit and declared war on Germany and Italy on December 12. A blacklist of the 510 documented Germans living in Honduras had been compiled by US intelligence.

These “undesirable aliens” were arrested, and their businesses and properties confiscated. These Germans were taken from their Honduran families and deported to internment camps in Texas. The men were sent to a 22-acre compound called Camp Kennedy and the women and children relocated to another camp called Crystal City.

A total of around 4,500 Germans from all over South and Central America would pass through these camps during the war.
Though many would be repatriated to Germany in exchange for seriously wounded American military personnel, many Honduran Germans would remain until late 1946, after the war’s end, returning to find their homes and businesses in ruins and unable to claim any reparations. To say that the German population of Honduras was inconvenienced during World War II would be a major understatement.

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.

Mr. Johnny Returned to Utila to Share the Knowledge he Acquired

Johnny Bodden was born on US Independence Day in 1929, one hundred and twelve days before the Wall Street stock market crash that started the great depression. Mr. Johnny is part of the Silent generation, a cohort of people that worked hard and contributed greatly but were not given the recognition they deserved and were basically overlooked.

He left Utila at 11 years old to go to school on the Honduras mainland. He studied at ‘First Panamanian Instituto de Minas de Oro’ in Yoro, at Zamorano, and then at the United Fruit Company school in La Lima.

Young Bodden’s age was falsified on a document and he was presented to be three years older, just old enough to join the US merchant marine before the end of World War II in 1944. He sailed in the Mediterranean as a mate. He later salvaged ships scattered all around the World after the war, so they could be rebuilt in the US ports. This was a boom time for all kinds of businesses. People had ideas, energy, and optimism.

Everybody seemed to love Johnny Water.

His adventure of traveling around the world began as he sailed all around during and after the war. In 1960s he boarded a Guanaja fishing boat and went out to Colombia’s Quite Seno and Serrano fishing banks. The banks, while claimed by Colombia, were teaming with fish life: gigantic lobster and sharks. As luck would have it Bodden was wounded on a United Fruit Company ship and a nurse took care of him. She was Conchita, a young Honduran with German ancestors. They soon married and started a family.

After 30 years of not visiting the island, he returned to Utila to visit his mother and family. He came back to his island of youth to share his knowledge and show islanders a better way. “I installed the first electric water pump on the island,” remembers Mr. Bodden. It was the time when people were hardy, self sufficient and a bit stubborn. They drank rain water without filtering it, but few got sick.

Mr. Bodden began making water tests to educate Utilans about the pollution of the water they were drinking. He dug a 68 foot well just a few meters from his house in Utila town. That well now is the drinking water for over a thousand Utilans. “Majority of wealthy people-built tanks and cisterns,” says Bodden. But the not so wealthy were always short on water and dependent on often unfiltered water. The business found a strong and needed niche and “Johnny Water” thrived. At the peak of its success his “Johnny Water” bottles were shipped to La Ceiba and Trujillo. Everybody seemed to love Johnny Water and the inspectors from Tegucigalpa and La Ceiba appear on the island once a year to prove that the water is indeed first rate.

Today the main part of the Johnny Water business model is filling, and selling five-gallon jugs of water. A staff of three takes care of that. Robin Vigil has been working at Johnny Water for 16 years, and his coworker Walter Alexander Lopez, has worked at Johnny Water for 13 years. Twice a day they wash and fill 80-100 five-gallon containers with the filtered Johnny’s Water. “The hardness of the water is Key to good, healthy, life giving water,” says Bodden.

The production spikes during Holy Week and holidays, but nothing like it was four or five years ago when Johnny’s Water was producing 200 jugs a day. The competition has gotten fiercer, and many of the fixed costs have climbed up. The plastic bottles and jugs used to pack Johnny Water are imported from Tegucigalpa, and their shipping costs have increased tremendously. So has the competition. There are now four private companies providing drinking water to Utilans. Bushes, Island Springs, and Arches now all make and sell their own ice.

Not all water projects on Utila and Roatan are success stories. The desalination plant funded in 2009 with Honduran tax payer money and financed by the high interest loan of the World Bank only lasted a couple years. “We lend the water to show they were working, “says Mr. Bodden. He remembers the day of inauguration. “When you put wrong people in wrong places it is finished.”

A 50 Year Perspective on the Forgotten and Little Understood Conflict

Few people remember the July 14 to 18, 1969 war when El Salvador invaded neighboring Honduras, causing mass destruction, death and suffering.  Despite its name, the ‘Soccer War’ was not a spontaneous event that flared after a soccer match. The war was a planned event with objectives involving many bad actors in a drama that claimed thousands of lives. In the 100 hours of brutal conflict 2,100 Honduras and 900 Salvadorians were killed in urban and mountain warfare and in aerial bombings deep inside Honduras.
 

Fifty years later there is little knowledge and even less understanding why this seemingly senseless war took place. The conflict is mostly ignored in Honduran schools and there are very few references to it in Honduran media. The sad fact is that those who don’t know their own history are bound to repeat it. 

Gs overnments need enemies in order to rally the common people behind them and if the governments don’t have an enemy, one often has to be conjured up. This worked perfectly in football-obsessed El Salvador and Honduras, countries with internal conflicts over land, jobs and just a goal away at making their debut at the 1970 Football World Cup in Mexico.

The excuses for the war were also multiple: proud Salvadorians perceived mass expulsions of their compatriots as offensive. Hondurans were sold the idea that El Salvador had desires of expanding their territory to the Caribbean coast. The mistreatment of football players and fans in Tegucigalpa and in San Salvador added to the dented pride of both countries. Then there was the dispute of Honduras and El Salvador over several mountain border areas and two islands in the Gulf of Fonseca.

There is a likely a plot within a plot, within a plot.

Paya Magazine went through declassified State Department documents at the United States National Archives seeking what and who caused the ‘Soccer War.’ We tried to determine who knew what and what was the motivation behind actions of the many players involved in the war. This is what we found out.

THE BUILD UP

In 1969 the population of Honduras and El Salvador was a third of what it is today. Honduras was five times the size of overpopulated El Salvador, while it only had only 2.6 million inhabitants compared to El Salvador’s 3.7 million. Since the 1930’s a steady trickle of Salvadorians moved across the border, farmed and took on jobs. All-in-all as many as 20% of people living in Hondurans were Salvadorians.

Another player with a stake at protecting their interest were the American fruit companies accustomed at dominating Central American politics and protecting their investment since the 1900’s. United Fruit Company owned 10% of land in Honduras and average farmers found it difficult to compete.

In 1966 United Fruit created the Federación Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos de Honduras (FENAGH: National Federation of Farmers and Livestock-Farmers of Honduras) to protect its land holding interest by putting pressure on small farmers and Salvadorians. FENAGH also put pressure on Honduran president, Gen. Oswaldo López Arellano, to protect wealthy land owners and expropriate land owned by Salvadorians and squatters.

In 1967 a ‘Land Reform’ law took effect allowing the Honduran central government and municipalities to take over land farmed illegally by El Salvadoran immigrants and redistributed it to native-born Hondurans. Prior to the war breaking out, around 20 thousand Salvadorians laborers and migrant workers were expelled, leaving behind broken families and raising tension and sabre rattling in El Salvador.

Both El Salvador and Honduras were led by military strongmen used to using violence as a political tool. Honduran president Oswaldo Enrique López Arellano took power in a violent 1963 coup and stayed in power until 1971. President of El Salvador was Fidel Sánchez Hernández (in office from 1967 – 1972) was also a ruthless army general. Neither one of these men steered away from a fight or underhanded politics.

In his undergraduate thesis from Notre Dame University, Chris Newton argued that El Salvador’s land shortage was “artificial” and induced by concentration of land by elites… therefore, land monopolization and the primary cause of the Soccer War.

The US knew that El Salvador was to invade Honduras the evening before the war.

In June and July 1969 Americans were trying to figure out what was driving the escalation of the conflict and their best assessments came from Nicaragua’s spies in the Salvadorian government. The State Department confidential 937 summarized Somoza’s spy take at what were the real reasons behind the push for war. “Sol [spies’ pseudonym] believes there is likely a plot within a plot, within a plot, in Salvadorian-Honduran difficulties. According to Sol’s thesis, as Somoza tells it, Sanchez’s ‘leftist advisors’ pushed Sanchez to invade Honduras and overthrow [Honduran president] Lopez.”

The Salvadorian Press played a vital role in stirring up anti Honduran sentiment in months and weeks prior to the war. On June 27, the US Embassy chief of mission toured El Amatillo near the border and the ambassadors interviewed some of what they estimated was around 700 refugees. The refugees accused Hondurans of burning of property, beatings and harassment. Photos of well-dressed, European-looking handsome Salvadorian “crisis actors” posing as distressed refugees made front pages of Salvadorian newspapers.

Department of State declassified documents also indicate that US officials were under the impression that the refugee’s testimonies were exaggerated or faked. “All thought the torture and rape stories were mighty unconvincing. They all believed as I did that the refugees fled out of fear, threats of violence, lack of protection, and a general feeling that they were unwanted,” wrote US Ambassador to El Salvador William Bowdler about his and three visiting the border ambassadors.

It is very important to convince the public to go to war and be ready to die for reasons they don’t fully, or just barely understand and Salvadorian media was doing everything to stir up emotions and hatred.

In months and days prior, and even during the war, both El Salvador and Honduras desperately were looking to beef up their arms cache. “On 17 July, Rpresentatives ofFirst National City Bank, New York, inform us Central Bank of El Salvador has requested confirmation two letters of credit, totaling $1.3 million in favor of German arms manufacturers,” wrote in State Department telegram on July 17.

According to State Department documents on July 15, “Diario Las Americas editor [Horacio] Aguirre provided an unconfirmed report to the US embassy that “Nicaragua plans to deliver military hardware, especially ‘tanks,’ to Honduras this evening.” Thanks to agent influence planting in operation Mockingbird, CIA had plenty of informers in different branches of US military, academia and American press.

Declassified Secret 771 Department of State telegram informs that Panamanian National Guard shipped rifles and ammunition to El Salvador prior to the commencement of war. A confidential report No. 591 referred to reports that there was no truth to an Israeli ship bound for El Salvador with arms had been stopped in Panama Canal on July 18. While El Salvador received the bulk of new arms, there was strong evidence that Nicaragua supplied Honduras with weapons and ammunitions in the last 24 hours of the conflict.

In addition to having Nicaragua as a source of arms, Honduran military went to the Miami mob to purchase arms for their troops. “Local bank sources (..) tell us in strictest confidence that 7.5 million arms purchase in being acquired on “U.S. black market” and cargo flight reportedly being arranged Miami for today,” wrote Jean Marie Wilkowski Deputy Chief of US Mission, on 16 July, 1969, in 765 telegram Tegucigalpa Embassy.

Honduran military went to the Miami mob to purchase arms for their troops.

There was a collusion of El Salvador’s private,military and governmental interests. One such example was in a conversation recalled by Roatan resident Erick Anderson. “Archie Baldocchi, El Salvador’s Aeroclub President, asked me if I could provide some badly needed parts for P-51 Mustang fighter. And that ‘we’ will be happy to compensate me well,” said Anderson about the conversation that took place in the weeks preceding the war. Anderson, a Roatan resident since 1960s, back then was a 27-year-old Central America Sales Manager for Cessna. His job took him to meet government officials all over Central America.

The tensions between the two countries hit a crescendo during the 1970 FIFA World Cup qualifier. In June 1969, Honduras and El Salvador met in a two-leg 1970 FIFA World Cup qualifier. Hondurans kept the Salvadorian Team awake by chanting and making noise in front of their Tegucigalpa Hotel all night. There was fighting between the fans and the June 8 match ended up with Honduras winning 1:0.

In a rematch on June 15, Salvadorians burned the Honduran flag at the stadium and delivered more violence. Salvadorians took home a 3:0 victory, but a deciding playoff match was scheduled for June 27 in Mexico City. Playing in the Azteca stadium, El Salvador prevailed 3-2 in extra time.

After the final football match, things continued to turn for the worse. The Honduran government exacerbated tensions by continuing the expulsion of as many as 11,000 Salvadorians and El Salvador severed diplomatic ties, stating that Honduras had “done nothing to prevent murder, oppression, rape, plundering and the mass expulsion of Salvadorians.”

While the abuses suffered by Salvadorians were exaggerated and the tempers just kept on rising. “(…) British Ambassador, the Brazilian Ambassador and Monsignor Cassidy of the Papal Nunciatura. All thought the torture and rape stories were mighty unconvincing. They all believed as I did that the refugees fled out of fear, threats of violence, lack of protection, and a general feeling that they were unwanted,” read a June 27 State Department report from El Salvador. The stage and pretext for invasion was set.

The Salvadorian military began military operations prior to the official break out of the war. First clashes took place on Thursday morning (July 10) when “forty armed Salvadorian civilians entered Santa Ines, near Goacoran in Valle department, committing various acts of pillage especially robbing food.” There was shooting which frightened villagers. Police (ces) chased Salvadorians away,” reads the State Department confidential 634 from July 13.

The White House was kept informed of the escalating conflict. DNSA Memorandum from a telephone conversation between President Nixon and Kissinger on July 14 states: “K (Kissinger) said the Salvadorian Ambassador said it is a matter on national honor that they do something. They are afraid there will be a coup. They have a very unruly army,” said Kissinger, National Security Advisor to President Nixon.

The US knew that El Salvador was to invade Honduras the evening before the war. A confidential declassified Telegram from the Embassy in Managua to Washington from 13 July 1969 said that “Sol advised Somoza on behalf of President Sanchez that Salvador had decided to invade Honduras.” Somoza called the US embassy’s Crockett at 7pm to say this.

It wasn’t going to be a very big war – just a little shot here and a little shot there,” said Kissinger.

What is even more surprising is that the US and others not only knew that the war was going to break out, they knew how long it was going to last. This is confirmed by a recorded conversation between Henry Kissinger and Charles Meyer, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs from 1969 to 1973. “Let me tell you what the Salvadorian Ambassador said. He said it wasn’t going to be a very big war – just a little shot here and a little shot there,” said Kissinger at 1pm, July 14.

THE WAR

Salvador moved into Honduras days and weeks before doing reconnaissance and moving artillery pieces in strategic places inside Honduran territory. On July 14, almost 30,000 Salvadorian troops began an all-out assault on Honduras in three ground war theaters: Chalatenago, Northern, and the Eastern front.

The larger and better equipped Salvadorian troops made quick gains following two roads into Honduras. The fighting also took place in the wooded mountains, villages and towns of southern Honduras. After brutal urban fighting, Salvadorians managed to take the town of Nueva Ocotepeque, the capital of the Ocotepeque Department.

While the Bay Islands were unaffected by the war, today Roatan is home to one veteran of the war: Adolfo Cruz, 68, of Los Fuertes. Cruz is fit, energetic with a tough gaze and ready to talk about the conflict that shaped him. In 1969 Cruz was an 18-year-old serving in La Ceiba. When the war broke out his unit was transported on busses to the front line in Ocotepeque. “We arrived on the scene at 2pm on July 15,” remembers Cruz. The Second Military Zone had 80 soldiers and was commandeered by Captain Santiago Rojas Vasquez.

While the Bay Islands were unaffected by the war, today Roatan is home to one veteran of the war: Adolfo Cruz, 68, of Los Fuertes. Cruz is fit, energetic with a tough gaze and ready to talk about the conflict that shaped him. In 1969 Cruz was an 18-year-old serving in La Ceiba. When the war broke out his unit was transported on busses to the front line in Ocotepeque. “We arrived on the scene at 2pm on July 15,” remembers Cruz. The Second Military Zone had 80 soldiers and was commandeered by Captain Santiago Rojas Vasquez.

According to Cruz, he participated in especially intense fighting around San Rafael de las Matare. “The Salvadorians had newer rifles, better equipment,” says Cruz. “We fought in close combat, shot from 100-200 meters.” At the end of three days eight of his unit’s soldiers were killed, 10% of the entire squad.

Honduran troops did the best with little they had. The radio communications were easily intercepted by the enemy and Hondurans came up with an idea. “When US used Navajo code talkers to communicate in World War II, we used Garifuna talkers,” says Cruz. According to Cruz, the unit’s Garifuna cooks Bartolo and Jose, were assigned to the radio and communicated with other Garifuna radio operators in the Honduran military.

This was not a war about football, the football match was just a pretext

“This was not a war about football, the football match was just a pretext,” says Cruz. “The Salvadorians wanted to take three Honduran departments of Cortes, Copan, Santa Barbara and Ocotepeque. Cruz says that Salvadorian General Chepe Medrano made statements that Salvadorian troops would have lunch in San Pedro Sula and dinner in Puerto Cortes.

The conflict exposed the widespread and extremely large malversation that was taking place in the Honduran Military for many years. “We had 9,000 troops fighting, but on the books, we had 18,000,” says Cruz. “Our commander would get money for salaries and upkeep of 200 soldiers, but there were only 80 of us there. Every year he would have a brand-new car,” remembers Cruz.

While Honduras lost ground in the first 72 hours of the war, its ally to the south was getting extremely concerned and threatened to aid the struggling neighbor. “Somoza says he is convinced that if cease-fire does not become effective by 5 a.m. Honduran resistance will collapse and chaos will follow unless Honduras is provided emergency material assistance,” read the July 18 communiqué No. 183 from the US State Department.

There was also daily combat in the skies over Tegucigalpa and later El Salvador. The Salvadorian Air force used passenger airplanes as bombers to drop explosives on Tocontin International Airport and other targets. Tegucigalpa and other large cities were blacked out. For every Honduran soldier to die, 10 civilians were killed.

“They turned DC-3 into bombers and threw out bombs out the passenger doors,” said Anderson about the El Salvadorian air force. “Some exploded and many did not.” According to Anderson, Charlie Mathews, an American businessman living on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa had a Salvadorian bomb land right in his back yard. “It was a dud,” said Anderson. Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and many other Honduran cities observed blackouts because of Salvadorian air raids and bombings.

Yet it was the Honduras air power bombing that was impressively accurate and damaging. Honduran Air force bombed Ilopango airbase on July 16 and Honduran bombers attacked Acajutla Port, setting El Salvador’s main oil storage facilities on fire.

While the air force of both countries used WWII era equipment, they managed to score some impressive feats. It was the last time in military history that piston-engine fighters fought each other in combat. The first aerial dog fight took place in 1913 during the Mexican civil war and the last one just south of there. Incidentally, Dean Ivan Lamb, the pilot involved in the first air dog fight, helped to establish the Honduran air force in 1921.

One of the more spectacular military feats in Honduran history took place on July 17. While Salvadorian Mustangs flew south of Tegucigalpa, Honduran Captain Edgardo Acosta Soto was flying a Corsair. Captain Soto shot down three Salvadorian planes that day, a no easy feat. Salvadorians were furious. Before his death in 2008 Capt. Soto explained that Honduran fighters were fighting on their own terrain that was much more varied and mountainous compared to that of El Salvador. That is what gave Honduran pilots a tactical advantage.

One of the concerns the US State Department had was that the Central American press had given more attention to the Salvadorian crisis than the Apollo 11 build up to “moon landing” broadcast. “Media coverage Honduras-El Salvador conflict heavy, almost equaling that for Apollo 11,” wrote in 904 Telegram from San Jose, Costa Rica on July 17. People of Honduras and El Salvador were gripped in the much more primordial struggle of warfare and survival and did not focus on America’s great publicity stunt.

After much pressure by the Organization of American States, at 10pm on 18 July the suspension of hostilities was announced. Just as scheduled by Kissinger, it was a little war: less than 100 hours and “just” thousands killed. Another victim was the Central American unity and free trade opportunities that were developing at the time. After blocking El Salvador’s access to the Pan-American Highway, Honduras practically withdrew from the Central American Common Market (CACM) and suspended its activities for 22 years.

When the tempers came down, this forgotten by most conflict protected Banana Companies land interest in Honduras and provided a backdrop for a series of military coups in El Salvador and Honduras. Military governments both in Honduras and El Salvador consolidated power and justified their rule.

Captain Soto shot down three Salvadorian planes that day.

THE AFTERMATH

Good fences make good neighbors and the El Salvador- Honduras border dispute, dating to XVIII century, appeared to be solved in 1993: 436.9 square kilometers. The disputed land was divided into six contested pockets, or bolsones and islands of Meanguera and El Tigre in the Gulf of Fonseca. The decision awarded 300.6 square kilometers to Honduras, and 136.3 to El Salvador. Even more importantly ICJ ruling assured Honduras’s free passage to the Pacific Ocean.

As the borders shifted, around 10,000 Salvadorans ended up in Honduras and 4,000 Hondurans in El Salvador. Out of 32 islands in the gulf of Fonseca, only three are recognized as Honduran. The International Court of Justice ruled that Honduras held authority over the island of El Tigre, and El Salvador over the islands of Meanguera and Meanguerita. Still, the conflict lingered on.

In December 2012, El Salvador agreed to a tripartite commission of government representatives from El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua that was to take care of territorial disputes through peaceful means. Yet in March 2013 letters between Honduras and El Salvador threatening military action were exchanged. Keeping the tensions alive between Honduras and El Salvador has its value.

Wars are indeed useful. Wars distract us from seeing problems at home and focus our anger at “an enemy” across the border. We are told to look for enemies within, but we don’t realize that the government itself does not have our best interest at heart. Therefore, the government itself could be more dangerous than anyone abroad.

Oranges and lemons were first introduced to Central America by the Spanish around 1550, then came coconuts in 1559 by way of the Cape Verde islands. The Paya name for coconuts is “koko ka” borrowed from the Spanish word “cocos”. Although plantains were indigenous to the New World, the much prized sweet version, the Gros Michel, or Big Mike, was first brought to the islands in 1835 from Martinique, where it was first propagated.

Both the United Fruit Company, and the Vacarro Brothers Fruit Company (renamed Standard Fruit in 1924), were founded in 1899 in Boston and New Orleans respectively .While United decided to start business in Tela and Trujillo on the mainland, the Vacarros chose Roatan, buying shipments of coconuts that also included mixed citrus fruits and bananas with between 100,000 and 200,000 coconuts being shipped per voyage. In September 1899, the Vaccaros sent their cousin, Salvador D’Antoni, on their first boat, a creaky, two mast sailing schooner called the Santo Oteri, to Roatan. Its namesake had been the first banana man in Honduras, before being bought out by United.

Islanders knew nothing about soil rotation and the need of large quantities of nitrogen

The fledgling banana industry reaped huge profits of up to 1000% for those involved. Despite being ravaged by a major hurricane in 1877, Roatan’s banana production was in full bloom when the visiting US Consul, Richard Burchard, wrote in 1884 that almost every hectare of cultivable soil on the island was planted with bananas. He noted that a four hectare parcel of land could be purchased for $250. The only equipment needed was a machete for clearing brush, weeding, and cutting the fruit, and a sharpened stick for planting the seeds. A small farm of 3,000 plants could expect a profit of $1,500 the first year and from $3,000 to $5,000 in successive years. This was big money at the time.

D’Antoni’s chief contact on the island was an Englishman called Bill Collins, who taught him the rudiments of banana selection and grading. The main collection and purchasing agents were Sam and Bessie Warren of Coxen Hole. Everything ran well for five years and for faster deliveries the Vacarros started chartering Norwegian flagged steamers. Unfortunately, the islanders knew nothing about soil rotation and the need of large quantities of nitrogen to fertilize the plants. The quality and size of the fruit started to decline, and in1904 Collins persuaded D’Antoni to shift the entire operation to the mainland.

It was first proposed to build the company headquarters at El Porvenir, but when the teetotal mayor of the town heard that it would be the hub for a railway, he vetoed the idea on account of the fact that it would bring alcohol and other vices to the town. Instead of El Porvenir becoming “La Bella Novia de Honduras,” (the beautiful bride of Honduras) the honor went to La Ceiba. Things progressed well, until 1910, when President Davilla imposed a 5 cent per stem tax on bananas and a 2 cent tax on imported railway equipment. This incensed the United Fruit Company who, in cahoots with former President Manuel Bonilla, devised a plot backed by $500,000 to overthrow Davilla. Over one hundred mercenaries assembled in New Orleans and sailed in the steamboat ‘The Hornet’ in December 1910 in order to topple the government. Their first target was Coxen Hole, Roatan. [To Be Continued…]