A fact of Honduran history after the 1840s is the structural weakness of the state as an organized political agent capable of administering a nationally defined territory, managing its constitutionally prescribed monopoly over security, and effectively addressing the most minimal aspects of the population’s economic and social welfare. Various factors explain this. A key problem has been Honduran elites’ lack of cohesion and enlightened commitment to their long-term interests among themselves and beyond their borders. Resorting to lethal violence to secure advantaged and corrupt access to state resources has been the result and norm, even to the detriment of elite unity and hegemony. This has often placed the state and country at the mercy of economic and military forces, local and international, that elites cannot control, and with which they have negotiated for short-term benefit and even personal survival, most often to the detriment of national interests, and Hondurans’ rudimentary well-being.
